


Halfway

by Ariana (ariana_paris)



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Episode: s04e14 Return to Grace, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1997-05-15
Updated: 1997-05-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 12:36:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1186269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariana_paris/pseuds/Ariana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p> Set during "Return to Grace". The former head of the Occupation and the Resistance fighter discover they may have more in common than they thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_"I know that our past makes it difficult for you to accept me as_  
an ally. I also know that every fibre of your being is telling you to  
say no, no, no. But somewhere I know there is a yes. You need to  
listen to that yes."   
                              Dukat to Kira, "Return to Grace"   
     
     
  
She was coming towards him, a mysterious half smile on her painted lips, and he could not resist that look. He had wanted her for so long, to touch her milky skin, run his hands through her fiery hair, see some affection in her stern, unforgiving face. She smiled as he approached in turn, gently shaking her head as she reached up to his shoulder. He closed his eyes and sighed at the touch of her hand through his shirt.

She pronounced his name and he opened his eyes again at the sound of her sharp voice. He found her neat face was now only a few centimetres away from his. Her hand continued its caress along the cartilage of his neck, up to the two strips of skin that ran from the lobe of his ear. A finger traced the contour of his jaw and then moved up to caress his thin lower lip. He sighed involuntarily at the tickling touch and caught the wandering hand in his to hold its soft palm to his cheek.

Unsure of his welcome despite her caresses, he released her hand to hesitantly slip his arms around her waist, pulling her gently towards him. She took a step forward, and the tip of her nose came level with his chin. He leant over to place a kiss on the soft ridges between her half-closed eyes and was rewarded by a little sigh. He responded with a similar sound, careful to keep his manifestations of desire within the bounds of her species.

Her arms went around his neck and she tilted her face up towards his, her red lips parting as she drew him even nearer. He had enough experience of her people to know what was expected from him at this point. In his youth, he had learned to appreciate this unusual activity, which members of his species had not experienced until they occupied her world for sixty years. It was a measure of the strange relationship between the master and slave races that the slaves had taught their masters a new trick of lovemaking. His mouth touched her lips hesitantly and then drew away slightly. Her hands in his hair kept him from moving further away, and then she kissed him.

He returned the kiss as best he could, appreciating the feel of her hands stroking the wide nape of his neck and then burying themselves once again in his hair. For some reason, he was not wearing his armour, which was rather fortunate considering the present situation, and the curves of her petite body pressed against the sensitive ridges of his chest. As her kiss became more passionate, he ran one hand down the rough material of her red tunic and slipped it under the belt.

She broke the kiss and stepped back. Her expression was still slightly amused, but there was a tenderness in it that he had never seen before. Nearly an expression of affection... perhaps even forgiveness. And to see that expression on her face was a precious gift. He lifted a hand off her waist and raised it to stroke the smooth skin of her cheek. She leant into his touch and he decided to take that as a yes.

Bending his knees slowly to sink to the ground, he pulled her down with him, until he was kneeling on the floor with her half kneeling, half straddling him. From the look in her dark eyes, he gathered she appreciated his concession to the mating rituals of her people. She raised her hands to his temples and then ran them down his neck to where his ridges tapered off under his shirt. He gave way to her gentle push and lay down on the ground as she settled on top of him.

His eyes flew open. This was ridiculous.

He stared up at the ceiling above the hard bed, his breath still irregular at the memory of his mind's construction. It wasn't that he didn't want to do that with her, but he did feel just slightly pathetic indulging in a fantasy about it. He usually managed to veer the desires of his mind onto non-existent people, women he would never meet face to face, and who as far as he was concerned had no personality or existence beyond impersonating his desire. It had been quite some time since he felt driven to fantasise about someone he actually knew, and he didn't like it. Particularly as he probably had as much chance of seducing her as he had of convincing his mother to embrace his illegitimate daughter.

What was worst about this was that she was lying in a similarly badly designed room only a few meters away. He wondered what sort of a welcome he would receive if he actually went in to see her. She possibly wouldn't be very surprised – he had made his attraction for her abundantly clear by any species' standards – but he could imagine he would be less than welcome. She had made her dislike of him equally clear. Still, the humidity of his skin increased again at the thought of her graceful body laid out on her Klingon bed, her creamy white skin concealed by some shiny light material... He swung his legs off the bed with a sigh. There was only one thing to be done under the circumstances.

He slipped on his trousers and walked out into the corridor. It was a pity that, in boarding the Klingon ship, they had left most of their possessions behind. There had been no time to pack their bags when she had come up with the plan to exchange places with the enemy crew. A brilliant plan it was, too. There they were on a weak freighter, combating a Klingon bird of prey, and risking imminent defeat, when she suddenly came up with the idea of using the Klingon transporters to beam the Klingon crew off their ship, while beaming themselves onto it. Trust that woman to come up with the key to their victory.

The victory was short-lived, though. The civilian government on Cardassia, which had been so eager to demote him as soon as the scandal about his daughter broke out, did offer to reinstate him as chief military advisor, but they were fiercely opposed to using the knowledge stored in the bird of prey's databanks to achieve military advantage. They wanted to *negotiate*! Well, he had told them what to do with their negotiations. But now, he had no choice but to strike out on his own, to fight the Klingons just as the Bajorans had once fought him. The Bajorans had won -- maybe he would, too. In the meantime, he had at least had the satisfaction of blowing the entire Klingon crew to bits as soon as they materialised on the freighter.

And now, here he was on his prize -- a slightly elderly, but nonetheless powerful space ship, complete with the personal effects of its late crew, not that Klingons were given to accumulating personal effects. He could sympathise with them as far as that was concerned; he didn't regret much of what he had blown up with the freighter. His daughter had somehow managed to retrieve some bits and pieces, including her mother's personal display unit, but aside from that, they had all transported on as is, and had to make do with the clothes they were wearing. Fortunately, he had no doubt he would be able to get any item the Klingon replicators couldn't provide from the Federation replicators on Deep Space Nine tomorrow. He had heard they still contained some of the programs the Cardassians had left. As to clothes... He grinned as he remembered who the station's tailor was. There was some justice in the Universe after all.

In the meantime, since he did not like the idea of sleeping in his uniform when it was not absolutely necessary, he had put on a reasonably clean maroon shirt he had found among the possessions of the Klingon captain. The neck was too tight, of course, but leaving the top half open made it wearable. He just hoped he wouldn't meet anyone in this strange costume. When he had put it on and viewed himself in the mirror, he had found it gave him the air of an interstellar pirate, which was only fitting if he was going to live the life of a renegade from now on. He sighed as he thought of this – for some reason, it made him feel very old.

As there were no facilities on the ship for him to exercise or amuse himself while he waited for the mood to pass, he decided a brisk walk would have to do. He was probably going to spend a great deal of time on this captured ship, and he might just as well get to know it as best he could. Once he had finished doing that, he would perhaps pay a brief visit to one of this deck's bathrooms. The Klingons were not so keen on hygiene as to have bathrooms in every room, and the ones the ship did provide came nowhere near Cardassian standards. But until he could have something done about the problem, he would just have to put up with it.

He had just completed his brisk walk and reached the nearest of those rooms when the door to it opened and he was suddenly reminded of the reason for his presence there. So much for exercising. He couldn't help running his eyes over the sight before him, right from the horrified expression on her face down to the neat shape of her pink and white feet. She had evidently resorted to the Klingon replicator to find suitable night clothing. Her item of choice fell in loose folds around her, clinging to the subtle curves of her alien body, while leaving her arms bare and covering her legs only to mid- thigh. It was a sight worth seeing, but one he could have done without just then.

"Major..." he started, before continuing in Bajoran. "What a pleasant surprise." It had occurred to him that this ship was not equipped with an environmental universal translator, and it was only polite to speak to her in her own language. He had learned it during his years in the occupation forces, and was reasonably certain he could conduct a conversation in it.

She seemed rather taken aback, either by his appearance or his Bajoran. But it didn't take her long to recover.

"What are you doing here, Dukat?" she said, spitting out his name as if it were a raw taspar. He decided her hostility was probably largely motivated by her current state of undress.

He put on his most ingratiating smile and watched as her dark eyes narrowed suspiciously. He was constantly amazed at how expressive the bland, featureless face of the Bajorans could be. In his many years on Bajor, he had learned to read the variety of their expressions just as well as those of his fellow Cardassians. In the process, he had also come to appreciate the simple beauty of their unadorned skin.

"Surely you haven't forgotten, Major," he said reasonably, pulling himself up to his full height to take advantage of the fact she wasn't wearing her boots for once. "We captured this Klingon ship together, remember? As its new captain, I believe I am entitled to visit any part of it I wish."

She gave a reluctant smile, and looked a little more amenable.

He sometimes wondered what she really thought of him. He knew, of course, that she had plenty of reasons to dislike him, and she had told him as much on many occasions. The gods knew, she must have hated him enough when he was the head of the Cardassian occupation force on Bajor. And yet, he couldn't help feeling her attitude towards him had been tempered by the time they had spent together. She had taken him entirely by surprise when she proposed to take care of Ziyal. Considering her dislike of him and of Cardassians in general, he would never have thought she would want to take on the care of his half-caste daughter.

"Well, I guess I'll leave you to your visit," she said, casting a mischievous glance at the bathroom door. "Goodnight," she added as she pushed past him.

He looked at the door and gently shook his head before following her. By staying just a few steps behind her, he had a rather pleasant view of her entire person. The hair on the nape of her neck was still wet, as if she had had a shower and had not quite succeeded in keeping her hair out of the water. On the other hand, maybe she had simply been washing her face and neck to take her makeup off, and had wet her hair in doing so. Or perhaps she had washed her hair and not quite got around to drying it properly. At any rate, her short red hair fell in dark, thick strands at the back of her head, and he admired the contrast with the pure contours of her smooth white neck.

His eyes followed the curve of her shoulder down to the thin arm and petite hand that swung ever so gently to keep her balance as she walked. He looked further along to where the Klingon material creased and smoothed out with the movements of her narrow hips, and then down to her bare legs and feet. He could imagine from past experience what the rest of her body would look like, the pale unadorned expanse of her back and stomach, the beautiful simplicity of her breasts, the surprising complexity of her sex, the soft dry skin exempt of all the small ridges and gentle hollows of a Cardassian woman.

As he watched, she stopped walking and her head swivelled around on the graceful neck he had admired earlier. The expression on her face was less than graceful, however.

"What are you looking at, Dukat?" she snapped.

He spread his hands to profess his innocence, even though he wasn't sure how much of him she could see in the reduced lighting of the alien ship. He knew her dark Bajoran eyes wouldn't be as sensitive as his.

"I assure you, I meant no harm," he said, half acknowledging that he was indeed looking at her.

She looked doubtful for a moment and then evidently decided it wasn't worth discussing, because she turned away again and continued towards her quarters.

"Actually, Major, since you're awake, perhaps we could take this opportunity to discuss some more serious matters," he said softly.

She sighed and stopped only a few steps further, beneath one of the lights. It shed a soft reddish glow on her pale skin, outlining the folds of the dress she wore and casting gentle shadows on her bare legs.

"About what?" she said shortly.

"Ziyal for instance. This is, after all, the last chance we will have to talk before we reach Deep Space Nine. I was planning to talk to you earlier, but I thought you had gone to bed." He allowed himself a brief pause to look over her improvised night dress. If he had known she was lying on her bed dressed like this, it would have taken more than a brisk walk for him to recover. "Since you are awake, we could perhaps take this opportunity to discuss my daughter's future on the station. Although there is no one I would rather entrust my daughter to, and you can be sure I have the utmost confidence in your capabilities, I do know you have no children of your own. Therefore, I believe that, before we part tomorrow, I should try to..." He struggled to remember the word he wanted and failed, to her obvious amusement, "...explain the best methods to use. After all, I have extensive experience on this subject, as the father of seven children, and I have come to know Ziyal quite well in recent months. I think it would be an advantage for you if I were to share some of my knowledge before you take on the task of caring for her."

He was aware there was no need to make such a long speech. But for him to stop talking might cause an uncomfortable silence, and, if there was anything Cardassians despised, it was silence in a conversation. However, he did cut his soliloquy short when he realised she was giving him her usual mocking smile. It was quite remarkable how this woman could express hatred, amusement and disdain simply with varying degrees of her lovely smile. And those were just about the only emotions that made her smile when she was with him. He wondered if her smile would be any different if it expressed affection. Presumably he would never find out -- unless he got an opportunity to see her smiling at Shakaar. He ignored the pang of jealousy that seized his throat. What mattered right then was to seize the opportunity for a few more moments in her company.

As he watched the smile spread from her lips to her eyes, he wondered which emotion it was expressing this time.

"Do you have any particular advice in mind?" she asked patiently. Evidently amusement had won out.

He didn't really know where to start. After all she had been through, Ziyal needed a lot of attention. She was quite ignorant, something he had found shocking and tried his very best to remedy, though circumstances made that difficult. She had been quite well- spoken and on her way to being a well educated, accomplished young woman before her captivity, but six years serving the Breen with former Cardassian soldiers and Bajoran prisoners had undone most of what she had achieved as a child. She could read and write, and still modulated her voice in a way that would suit a Cardassian lady, though her vocabulary sometimes reverted to an unsavoury patois of Bajoran, Cardassian and Breen which even a universal translator had difficulty processing. As to culture, all that remained were half- remembered songs and stories of her childhood.

"Well, she doesn't have much knowledge of Cardassian or Bajoran culture," he said evenly, trying to hide the disgust that inspired in him. "In fact, one could say she is quite ignorant. Without knowledge, she will come to nothing, and lead an unhappy life. She needs to be given an opportunity to learn, to expand her mind beyond the confines of her existence. She is also in need of some general education; her manners and language are still good, but will need to be better if she is to move in good society."

"As opposed to the rabble on Deep Space Nine?" she asked, apparently rather annoyed by his simple statement. He wasn't far from agreeing with that assessment of the station's population. It housed a variety of species, from the dominant Bajorans and Terrans to assorted people from the Alpha, Beta and Gamma Quadrants. All the place needed was a few Borg, or whatever other species came from the Delta Quadrant, and it could boast representatives from every corner of the galaxy. So much diversity was probably invigorating for someone like Kira, but it might prove confusing to a girl as unsure of her roots as Ziyal was.

"Major, I did not say anything about Deep Space Nine," he retorted smoothly. "In fact, I am quite sure your colleagues there appreciate good manners as much as any good society. You can also be sure I would not consider letting you take Ziyal to the station if I did not believe you were capable of delivering the sort of education I would want for my daughter. However, it is a fact that there are a great many species on the station, including quite a large contingent of Terrans. All these species have conflicting ideologies and cultures, and this might prove confusing to Ziyal, who is still trying to learn the ways of the people she belongs to. After what she has been through, she will need some precise cultural references, including manners fitting to her race."

"Well, I can't give her a Cardassian education, if that's what you want," she said sharply. She seemed about to add something, possibly some curt remark about Cardassian education, which was notoriously harsh, but she evidently thought better of it. He was grateful for that, as he didn't think an argument with her on that subject would achieve anything.

"No, and I would not expect you to. Ziyal is, after all, half- Bajoran, and I would not like her to lose that side of her heritage." Kira looked suspiciously at him, but he continued, "I have been trying, ever since we rescued her, to continue her education where it was abruptly cut off six and a half years ago. For obvious reasons, I was only able to teach her about her Cardassian heritage, but I believe she should also know something of Bajor. I did not think she would have the opportunity to learn so soon, but believe me, Major, I welcome it heartily. It was always understood that, being half- Bajoran and half-Cardassian, she should gain some knowledge of both people, and it gives me great pleasure to know that she will. Furthermore, learning about the language, art and civilisation of both species will broaden her mind and make her more receptive to further knowledge. It has been a while since she was taught anything but manual labour, but she is an intelligent young woman, and now that she is rediscovering the simple process of knowledge acquisition, she should have no difficulty catching up with what a woman her age should know."

Kira's face softened as he spoke, and she nodded. "I see. You're right, she'll need a good education. Maybe I could get Keiko to give her some private lessons," she said, half to herself. He wondered who 'Keiko' was, but then decided it probably didn't matter. "She should be able to learn from the computers, too. I think there are some good educational programs in the Federation databanks."

He wasn't too sure he liked the sound of that. "I am entrusting my daughter's education to you, not to the Federation." All he needed was for Ziyal to be tainted by strange Terran customs and beliefs. That she should learn about Bajor was only fair, and something that her mother and he had always agreed upon. Not that her mother had been enthusiastic about the idea at first, but he considered there was too much beauty in the cultural heritage of Bajor for his precious child to ignore it completely. But he was not keen on her learning any more than necessary about the Terran-dominated Federation. Still, with any luck, any knowledge accumulated about their customs would be useless when they withdrew in a few years' time. If they withdrew...

"She could do worse than learn about a species that seems to populate half the Quadrant," she said with a little smile.

He shook his head and rolled his eyes. "It is not their numbers which worry me, so much as their ideas." He would have expanded on his dislike of humans, but she managed to interrupt him before he got a chance to continue.

"They're not so bad once you get to know them. I felt like throwing every one of them through the bulkheads when I first started working with them, but I'm really quite fond of them now."

"As I recall, you were ready to throw a great many people through the bulkheads in those days," he said softly.

He didn't normally think about that time -- it would probably rank with the current period as one of the all time lows of his life -- but the memory of the newly appointed Major Kira Nerys, with her unbecoming hairstyle and brand new Bajoran uniform, presented itself in his mind and made him half smile. Though he would never have admitted it, it had been a relief for him to find so many people from his time had stayed on the station. They were by no means his friends, and he barely knew Kira when the Federation moved in, but at least he knew where they stood, and that was a help with the Terrans. Their species made him nervous; while he despised them for their individual dullness, he feared their collective creativity, and their incredible ability to impose their culture on other species without so much as lifting a finger on them. At least he felt reasonably safe in the knowledge that the Terrans were hemmed in by their treaty with the Bajorans. And that Sisko, probably the dullest of the lot, was hemmed in by Kira Nerys.

"Yeah," she said, apparently also thinking back to those days. "Though that still holds true for some people," she added.

He presumed she was talking about him and smiled. "I appreciate your restraint," he said.

He waited to see if she would respond, but she didn't say anything, and the result was an embarrassing silence. Then, just as he was about to say something, anything, to break the silence, she sighed, and said, "Right. Anything else?"

He wondered how he could broach the subject that came to mind. There were quite a few more things she would need to know about Ziyal in order to take good care of her. But, as the girl's father, there was one thing that worried him particularly. Discussing it with Kira wasn't going to be easy, though.

"Major, how much do you know about the physiology of half-castes?" he asked, lowering his voice and moving closer to reduce the chance that someone might overhear them. Fortunately, Ziyal's quarters were much further down the corridor, beside Kira's.

She seemed puzzled by his question. "Why?"

"Well, the fact is that our two people are quite similar physiologically speaking, even though we do not look the same. That is why it is relatively easy for us to produce half-caste children," he said, vaguely aware that he was being evasive and seemed to have strayed from the point. "In fact, those children often display characteristics from both species at once, and that is not just limited to the Bajoran nose and the Cardassian ridges."

"Yes?" she said slowly, prompting him to get to the point.

He couldn't believe how difficult it was to discuss this subject with her. Of course, it was not the sort of thing any man should discuss with a woman who was neither a relative, nor a lover. It would also have been easier if he had not been trying to seduce her for some time; as it was, he was very much afraid that she would take this conversation as another pass.

"I... It's just that... it isn't just a question of getting the right cycle for eating and sleeping," he said carefully, hoping from her serious expression that she would realise he was being equally serious. "As a general rule, half-castes exhibit sexual behaviour similar to that of full-blooded Cardassians. You might argue that there isn't that much difference between Bajorans and Cardassians on that point... or you might not." He had no idea how much she knew about his species' sexual habits. "But there are some quite sizeable differences." He realised that was not a very fortunate choice of words.

Kira managed to keep a straight face, though the slight pleating of her eyes indicated she had also noticed his slip.

"Such as?" she asked.

He was obviously going to have to do some explaining. He was very good at explaining things, of course, and could have lectured at length on this particular subject. But somehow he didn't feel he had the right audience, and decided to keep his dissertation short.

"Well, for instance, it is only now that she is feeling a bit better physically and psychologically that Ziyal's body has completed its maturation. She is still rather shy about that particular aspect of her life, and I believe it would be in her best interests if you could perhaps broach the subject with her to make her more comfortable about the idea." He wondered if he was perhaps being a little too evasive about this; if he continued like that, he ran the risk that Kira might miss his point.

"Of course, I'll talk to her... Wait a minute. She didn't mature before? But she's nineteen." She was very surprised. This was obviously one of the differences she didn't know about. But then these reproductive details were not the sort of thing Cardassians liked their adversaries to know.

"Yes, it's a Cardassian particularity," he explained. "Excessive stress often makes women sterile, and since she wasn't... ready when she was captured, her body decided to put puberty on hold for a few years."

"Quite a few years," she said thoughtfully.

He loved this. He had managed to catch her completely off guard, and her face was wide open with amazement. It was a pleasure to see such an innocent expression on her normally wary features.

"It affects men, too, but to a lesser extent," he continued, conscious that she probably didn't want to know this much about Cardassian particularities. "And it doesn't affect all women the same way. My grandmother had two children while she was in prison... though no one ever gave me a satisfactory explanation as to how..." he let his voice trail off with a grin.

The corners of her eyes were pleating very slightly, and then her mouth curled into a little smile. She was still listening, though, so he carried on.

"As soon as Ziyal was rescued, as I said, Nature did some rapid catching up. I was able to explain some basic principles to her when that happened. She seemed to have forgotten most of what she learnt from us before her captivity, so I think the actual manifestations came as a bit of a shock to her... I suppose you can guess why?" He knew he was supposing right. That was one of the similarities between the two species.

"Pheromones," she said simply.

"Yes..." he said slowly. "I found myself having to brush up on all the things I learnt as a young adult myself. But she needed a lot of explanations. That was not easy, Major; the fact is that our society usually enforces a strict separation of the sexes, and in particular, it is not a father's place to educate his daughter in such matters. So you can imagine that was... rather embarrassing for both of us. At least, since you are a female yourself, she will be more willing to take advice from you. Not that she didn't listen to me, but I think she was well aware that I wasn't the best person to talk to, not having any personal experience..."

"Yes, all right," she said, interrupting him a little impatiently. "I'll try to learn up on Cardassian sexuality and tell her all about it."

She was still smiling and the opportunity was too good to miss. "Do let me know if you need any help, Major."

The half smile was wiped off her lips as she gave him the irritated look she usually got when he made a pass at her.

"But I'm sure you will do very well," he added a little more seriously. "Ziyal is a little ignorant and inexperienced, but she is intelligent, and of course, like Bajorans, Cardassians are able to control... that." He couldn't think of the Bajoran word.

"Really?" she said, a little saucily, he thought. He wondered if she was talking about him and made a mental note to have a chuckle about that later.

"It just takes some discipline," he concluded.

Kira nodded gravely and he was pleased to see she was paying due attention to what he was saying, despite her teasing. For some unknown reason, they had both started walking down the corridor again, though they were not going very fast. As they walked along, he turned to look at her walking beside him, and admired the pure lines of her Bajoran profile, how her nose ran straight down from her sloping forehead to the curves formed by her lips and chin. She was not a beautiful woman, but she was handsome enough, and had a personality to run rings around any dish-faced young beauty.

"So, are you looking forward to roaming around the sector in your new ship?" she asked conversationally.

"Oh, not really," he admitted. "There is no pleasure in contemplating life as an exile."

"You could have returned to Cardassia," she reminded him, though her slightly ironic tone of voice suggested she knew perfectly well that had not been an option. He wondered if the tone was voluntary; if so, Kira was revealing more subtlety than he had come to expect from her in the past.

However, he was not in the mood for a serious conversation, and chose to make light of the situation.

"No, I suppose I had rather be killed by Klingons than by the combined efforts of my wife and mother."

"That bad, is it?" she said with a grin.

"You wouldn't know... you've never been married to a Cardassian lady," he answered, delighted at how relaxed she seemed to be in his company. It was a strange experience, slowly strolling along the corridor, Major Kira smiling at his side. There wouldn't be many opportunities to do this again. Tomorrow, he would be leaving her at Deep Space Nine, perhaps even saying goodbye to her for the last time. But he was not one to mull over the possibility of unhappiness in the future; what mattered was the here and now. And here and now, he was in the company of an attractive woman for the first time in a long, long time.

"You know, Dukat," she said, obviously preparing to tease him, "I find it difficult to believe anyone in the galaxy was unlucky enough to have you as a husband."

He lifted an eye ridge at her. "I will have you know that she quite liked me."

"Really?" She said it in nearly the same mischievous tone as earlier, only this time, her smile was more confident.

He wondered if she was flirting with him. Insulting a man a propos of nothing was the sort of thing Cardassian women did when they fancied someone. "Yes," he said, unsure if he should take her behaviour at face value, or put it down to some intercultural misunderstanding. He decided to concentrate on the bantering. "You might not believe this -- and seeing as you are Bajoran, you definitely won't -- but I was very good looking when I was young. Good-looking and ambitious... irresistible, in a word," he said with a self-mocking grin.

"There has to be some reason why you have seven children," she said casually.

"Yes, lack of birth-control," he said calmly, giving her the benefit of a sly grin he hoped would hide his confusion. He knew she couldn't be flirting with him, but he was still a little puzzled by her behaviour. She laughed at his joke, and he was fascinated by this new expression on her face. A smile of undiluted mirth. He resisted the temptation to take advantage of her moment of relaxation and slip his arm around her slender waist. The thought was still enough to make him stop.

She stopped as well and looked at him curiously, the smile fading slowly from her lips. He wished he had the powers of a Betazoid to know what was going on in her mind right then. But he did not, and his knowledge of her was not even enough for him to guess. She was looking at him intently, as she had been when he was talking about Ziyal and Cardassian sexuality. She couldn't be interested... he dismissed the question as pure fantasy. He knew even a Bajoran could appreciate his looks and manners, but wasn't so sure this one would.

Still, he enjoyed the moment and looked into her unaligned dark eyes. It was not possible to look into both her eyes at once, and he found that disturbing, but also strangely attractive. Which was not really a surprise, as he found the whole of her attractive anyway. She was still young, but past the false bloom of immaturity, and, while she conserved the sharp personality that had always captivated him, she had acquired in the four years since the end of the Occupation a softer edge. Her voice was gentler, and she smiled more often, was more willing to listen to him without glaring or shouting at him. Her hair, once long and red, was now shorn into reddish brown curls that softened her features. Neither Bajorans nor Cardassians would have called her beautiful, but one could not, or at least he could not, help but admire her bright eyes and dimpled smile. His eyes wandered to her family earring dangling on one side of her face, and then moved down to her dress. It was less revealing of her fine figure than her uniform, but he found her bare arms and legs distracting. And her feet were making him positively dizzy.

As if she knew what he was now thinking about, she lowered her eyes. He stared at her downcast eyes for a moment longer, noticing that one reason they looked so strange tonight was that they were not made up. She usually brushed some dark brown on the outside of her lids to accentuate their slanting tilt. He was seized by a sudden desire to place his thumb in the shallow fold of her eye, and run it along to her temple, down to her cheekbone, then further to the undecorated line of her jaw, to caress the smooth skin of her neck... He breathed in sharply and cursed copiously in his mind. With well trained discipline, he banished the thought and calmed his body. He only hoped he was far enough for her not to have noticed. Pheromones could lead to some very embarrassing situations.

She cast a nervous glance at his shirt and then seemed to look into the middle distance. He automatically looked down at his chest to see if there were any embarrassing ridges in evidence there. The open flap revealed the drop shaped hollow on his clavicle and a few of the adjoining scales, but surely she had seen that much on Cardassians before. Maybe she just wasn't used to seeing him without his uniform.

"Anyway," she said, obviously desirous to talk about something else. "I promise I'll take good care of Ziyal and keep her out of harm's way."

"I'm sure you will. She won't be any problem; she's a bright young lady and she's eager to fit in now that she's free. I know she's looking forward to living with you -- she admires you a lot."

"Yes," she said a little shortly, starting off down the corridor again. Maybe she was afraid he would say something about his own admiration for her. He chose not to.

"I'm just sorry she can't stay with me," he said pensively. "Oh, I know the reasons why she would be better off on the space station. All three of us agree that is far safer for her than staying on this ship. After all, who is to guarantee that we won't get shot out of the sky by the next Klingon vessel we meet? And you're right, I don't want Ziyal to lead the life of a renegade, trapped on this ugly ship, living in fear and hatred. She has lived in ugliness too long, it's time she got a chance to live among happier people in a more pleasing environment."

He remembered the beautiful architecture of the former Terok Nor, and could quite imagine his daughter living there as he had once done. The image of a woman leaning against one of the eye-shaped windows in his living quarters came to mind. She was looking out at Bajor, which was visible from the station back in those days, before the Federation moved it to lay claim to the wormhole. Her long dark hair was loose and he was pleased he had convinced her to let it keep its natural colour. Strange how his mind could remember that moment in time so precisely while other, more important events had faded into oblivion. He remembered every detail of her rosy face, how calm and serene she had looked in the darkness, how her plain beauty outshone every star behind her as she turned and spoke his name.

"Dukat?"

He realised he had been silent for a while longer than usual, and shook himself out of his reverie. He swallowed hard to chase the memory. Life was seldom fair, and there was no point lamenting things past. What really mattered was to seize the moment -- though this was possibly not the moment to seize Kira.

"Oh, I was just thinking... as I sometimes do," he added to keep the conversation shallow enough for comfort.

"Really?"

"Major, do you realise that is actually the third time you have said 'Really?' since we began this conversation?"

She spread her hands in helplessness.

"What can I say? I don't have your talent for making grandiose speeches at the slightest provocation."

"I don't think I have been making so many speeches tonight," he said defensively, well aware of her opinion of his verbosity.

"Well, no, but then maybe speaking Bajoran is cramping your style."

"It has been a while," he admitted. Whenever there was a universal translator available, he naturally used his native Kardasi to express himself.

She was silent for a moment, possibly debating as to the advisability of saying what she said next.

"Actually, your Bajoran is quite good."

"Hmm," he responded, waiting to hear if there was a catch to this praise. He could hear a considerable difference between his own uneven accent and her Dakhur drawl, and felt a little self-conscious about conducting a conversation in which, by essence, he couldn't have the full advantage. As it was, it was lucky the major was a little on the laconic side herself, or she could have dominated the situation quite easily. Still, he had been able to find words and construct sentences to his own satisfaction, which made him feel a bit better about making himself so open to her linguistic criticism.

"Though it is a bit strange," she added. "You have some sort of a regional accent."

"Yes," he said quickly. "A Cardassian one..." He realised they had reached the sickbay, which was not very far from his quarters, and stopped. "Major, would you care to continue this conversation somewhere else?"

She stopped too, and shook her head. "I'm not sure that's such a good idea."

"Oh come now, Major, what's a drink between old enemies?"

Her dark eyes were fixed on him again, unnerving him with their calm. He desperately wondered what was going on behind their curious stare.

"A drink? What would you want to drink at this hour?" she asked.

"Well, probably not raktajino," he said calmly, sounding for all the universe like his usual self. She wondered if he knew that was her favourite drink on Deep Space Nine. She decided he probably knew all about her, and preferred not to think about that too much. "We'd have to see what the replicators come up with," he concluded.

"Better take a translator, then," she said, starting down the corridor again. She had had enough of this. She was beginning to feel far too comfortable in his company. His smooth voice, his strange accent -- and it was not just a plain Cardassian one -- combined to make her relax to the point where she was even considering taking him up on his offer.

"Actually, I can probably string enough words of Klingon together to order some acceptable beverage," he said, coming with her.

"You speak Klingon?" She was vaguely surprised. It was strange enough to hear him actually speaking Bajoran, instead of the smooth speech the universal translator created in her mind when he spoke. She was still puzzled by his accent, especially after he was so eager to dismiss it. She had heard Cardassians speaking Bajoran before, but none of them had sounded like Dukat. His vowels were too strange, and she wondered if it was a residue of some regional accent he had in Kardasi. But she couldn't imagine Dukat would have risen so high with a strong regional accent.

"Yes, I can even muster up some Federation Standard if you really want a laugh," he answered, with a smile that bared his crooked teeth and drew lines on his pockmarked cheeks.

The idea of him speaking Klingon was funny enough, but the idea of anyone but a Terran trying to speak Standard was hilarious.

"Yes, that's a terrible language," she agreed with a laugh, relaxing once more in the comfort of their little conversation. "I had to do a quick course in it when I first started working on Deep Space Nine. All I can say is thank the Prophets for the universal translators."

She could never get her tongue around the sounds they used, let alone understand how their grammar worked.

"Universal translators are very useful," he started, "but I feel you miss the beauty of a foreign language unless you actually learn to speak and understand it. The linguistics and vocabulary of a language reveal so much about a people's past and culture. It is quite amazing, for instance, that a people like the Klingons, who are always spouting on about honour, only have one word to describe that concept."

She allowed herself a grin. This was Gul Dukat all right, going into full pontificating mode.

"That is partly due to the fact that when their language was first developing into more or less what it is now, the Klingons had no honour, so they only needed one word for the notion. Then, when their civilisation developed and honour became so important, preserving their language as it was at the time of Kahless became equally important, which is why they never developed another word for honour. Or maybe they were just too stupid to think up another one," he added. "The language of the Terrans first developed into its present form on part of a small island, and became a standard when the people of that island invaded half their world. They must have been a very resourceful lot -- Terra is teeming with different cultures and religions, imposing one language on them all must have taken a lot of effort. I suppose that explains why the Standard culture is so contagious, in spite of the language."

She had planned to let him talk on until they reached her quarters, which were not very far by now -- they had just passed his -- but she felt she wanted to add her own input to his fascinating exposé. Considering his knowledge of Bajoran, she suspected she would be able to share the joke with him.

"And you know what they call it?" she said, laughing at the thought.

"I know, I know! You must have thought it was hilarious when you discovered that," he said with a chuckle.

"But I mean, 'anklish'," she insisted. "What a name for a language!"

"I believe they pronounce it something more like 'engklesh'," he corrected. Then he chuckled again, with a typically Cardassian hiss. "But trust the Terrans to name their main language after an internal organ. Blessed Prophets, but they always have to be peculiar. Anyway, that's the sort of thing that makes learning a foreign language so fascinating."

"You're obviously very interested in languages. I suppose that's why you speak Bajoran so well," she remarked neutrally, hoping she could steer the conversation back onto the subject of his accent. Cardassians did not use expressions like "Blessed Prophets".

Of course, she knew exactly why he had learned to speak Bajoran. The Cardassians were intelligent enough to realise that they would be easily defeated if they relied on translators alone to communicate with the people they dominated. As a consequence, all the personnel stationed on the planet had to learn classical Bajoran, and, in some cases, the dialect of the region they were in. As a senior officer posted in the capital, Dukat would have been expected to have a perfect knowledge of the language. But that didn't explain the accent. No one in the capital spoke like that.

"I'm just wondering where you got that accent, though," she said, stopping in front of the door to her quarters. "It's definitely not just a Cardassian accent."

She really wanted to go in and forget about all this business, but she might as well get to the bottom of the mystery first. She was about to continue when he sighed and looked up at the ceiling, giving her a nice view of the smooth expanse of his throat in the process.

"It's a Netapka accent, Major" he said, his voice vibrating visibly under the grey skin before her.

She was suddenly aware that a little step forward could bring her lips in contact with that skin. She dismissed the idea, of course, but was annoyed that the happier life she was leading these days was bringing her to see sensuality in most of the people she met. She could explain that away as the fact that she had been so starved of beauty and happiness during the Occupation, she felt driven to make up for lost time now. But she really didn't understand why she should be seeing some beauty in Gul Dukat of all people. She decided to puzzle over that some other time.

"Yes, that's it," she said, noticing how serious he had become all of a sudden. "I knew I recognised those vowels from somewhere. I must say you're the only Cardassian I've ever met who had a Netapka accent. That area is pretty far from the capital, and the Netapka tend to keep to their own..."

"Naprem was from Netapka," he interrupted, now fixing his eyes on the ground.

She just stared at his face. His downcast eyelashes were casting soft shadows on the uneven skin of his cheeks. His thin lips separated in a sigh, and she watched as his eyes shifted position, just before his lids were raised and she found herself gazing into his cool grey stare again.

She was surprised by the sorrow she saw there, before reminding herself that there was no reason for surprise. There could be no doubt that he had sincerely loved Naprem, and the little she knew about the woman seemed to indicate she had loved him too. But she wondered how a Bajoran woman could have loved him -- this wasn't just any Cardassian, this was Gul Dukat. Talkative, scheming, egomaniacal Gul Dukat. And yet this woman had loved him, and she had meant so much to him the mere mention of her name made him unhappy. It was not the first time some part of her felt sorry for him, but the feeling was getting to be quite a habit these days. And his expression was so unusual, so vulnerable... strangely appealing.

"I... I should go to bed now," she said, cursing her voice for sounding so hesitant.

His eyes were still boring into her, though they were less sorrowful now. He smiled and leant a little closer, making her all too aware of her situation. He made her nervous enough under normal circumstances. Despite his reversal of fortunes, she could not help remembering the powerful and hated man he had once been. She could recall the first time she heard the name Gul Dukat. She was sixteen or seventeen, and he had just been promoted military commander for the administrative region including Dakhur. As such, he became a prime target for their movement though not, in those days, the most important one. He increased taxation on the working population, exacted higher quotas of labour from the villages, personally supervised punitive raids against the Resistance -- or anyone suspected of knowing anything about them. A promotion or transfer put him out of the resistance cell's eye for a while, and then, the next time she heard of him, he had become the Prefect of Bajor, the head of the occupation forces and the highest ranking Cardassian official on the planet. He was the one who signed the orders to torture prisoners, draft more labour into the mines, murder more civilians in retaliation for Resistance attacks. She knew she could never forget that. She wasn't sure if she could forgive him, either.

And yet this was Dukat as she had never wanted to see him. He looked strangely out of place in the dim red light of the Klingon ship, his black hair falling in straight strands alongside his narrow face as he smiled at her. She wondered where he had found the strange costume he was wearing. Possibly from the replicator, where she had got the dress. The rough maroon material of the shirt clung loosely to his lean frame, parting to reveal the drop shaped hollow at the base of his throat, and some of the complex pattern of scales on his chest. His body was not as muscular as she had expected, and in some ways, that pleased her. It confirmed her suspicions that his ubiquitous armour was just another of his facades, just as his posturing hid whatever real feelings he might have. But the shirt also made him look a lot more ordinary, and strangely vulnerable.

The rather confident smile on his lips, on the other hand, reminded her exactly who he was, and made her more than a little self-conscious about her own state of undress. She knew she should not have ventured out dressed like this, but the Cardassians had turned up the environmental controls on the ship, making the air unbearably hot and dry. Anyway, she had not expected to be so unlucky as to come face to face with Dukat. He was obviously enjoying the situation, and his light eyes had left her face to explore her body. It was unspeakably demeaning to be looked over like this, though some perverse part of her insisted on being flattered by his attention. As his face drew closer to hers she became aware of something else -- not so much a smell as a sensation her nose was eminently designed to process.

She realised she had said she was going to bed a few minutes ago, and had been standing in front of her door ever since, having a good look at Dukat's chest, and letting him look at her likewise. He was probably feeling very encouraged by now. She pulled herself together and turned around, careful not to look him in the eye as she placed her hand on the door controls. She was confused by the desire she felt rising in her and it was all she could do not to tremble.

"You don't have to go now," he murmured, his voice growling just above a whisper. She could sense he was standing right behind her, and resisted the temptation to step back and lean against him. The fact that the thought had even occurred confused her further. Why would she want to lean against Dukat? The man who personally oversaw the uridium processing on Terok Nor, who had had every acre of land in her homeland poisoned, who had ordered the execution of some of her closest underground friends, whose clammy hands were even now caressing the bare skin on her upper arms and sending shivers through her body. She had never felt so aroused by someone she disliked so much.

"Let go of me, Dukat," she pleaded, horrified at how weak her voice sounded. Needless to say, no man in his situation would have heeded such a pathetic refusal, and his hands remained right where they had been. He even pulled her a little closer. "Dukat," she said more firmly.

His hands loosened their grip on her arms, but his right hand pushed her gently to try and make her turn towards him. She resisted the movement; she didn't want him to see her face. In fact, all she wanted to do right then was to vanish into her quarters. She shrugged his hands off and pressed the door release.

"No, Major, please. I thought we could talk," he pleaded as she walked in. He took a step forward to keep the door open.

She turned and glared at him. She didn't think he would actually come in and force her, and indeed he was staying in the doorway, but she was too overwrought by her own emotions to think very rationally.

"Get out!" she ordered. She did remember to keep her voice down, as Damar's quarters were just next to hers.

The lights had come on when she entered, and as they were set to maximum for her own comfort, he was still blinking a little uncomfortably.

"Major, there is no need to shout. I apologise if my behaviour..." he started, but she interrupted him before he got a chance to make one of his speeches.

"Look, Dukat," she said, anxious to make her refusal quite clear, "just because I've decided to take care of your daughter doesn't mean my attitude towards you has changed in any way. As far as I'm concerned, if you and I were the last people in the Galaxy, that would be the end of civilisation."

"Major!" he exclaimed, though his expression suggested he found her outburst amusing rather than insulting. "I'll bear that in mind," he added gently.

That despite all her years of fighting his people she could have displayed such weakness in front of this man made her very angry. Part of her knew she only had herself to blame, and that lashing out at him would only confirm his suspicions that he had managed to get to her, but she was too overwrought to be calm. She hated the way he used her title, the way he was looking at her, the way he was standing there when she wanted him to go away and leave her alone.

"Just go away," she ordered, conscious that her protests were rather lacking in the forcefulness she would have used under normal circumstances. She knew enough about herself to realise she was extremely vulnerable when she was aroused. In fact, that was one of the reasons she was here right now; Shakaar had wanted her to go to a joint Bajoran-Cardassian conference, and convinced her by giving her a very compelling massage. If only he knew what he had let her in for. But he would never know... at least, she wouldn't tell him; she couldn't be sure Dukat would be so discreet. The thought made her flush violently; she could even feel her ears tingle.

In the meantime, he apparently wasn't the sort to take no for an answer, because the next thing she knew, he was walking into the room.

"Are you all right, Major?" he asked, sounding quite concerned. He wisely didn't come too near her, but just the fact that he had come in was enough to unsettle her. He looked decidedly strange in the bright light. It emphasised the curves and lines on his face, and revealed that the shirt was made of a light satiny material verging on the transparent. Staring at the bumps and hollows the alien garment revealed nearly made her forget to protest. He caught her eyes looking him over and moved nearer, in fact so near she could smell his desire again. He just leant towards her, intimidating her by his mere presence. She again fought the urge to touch him, but it became more difficult when he lifted his hand and stroked her cheek ever so gently.

"Get out, Dukat," she growled again, far more convincingly now that she really felt menaced.

He leant forward until his breath swayed her earring.

"Why?" he purred confidently.

He had such a smug expression on his face she felt very much like hitting him. She decided to leave that as a final recourse, and keep her attacks verbal for the time being.

"You want me to tell you why?" she exclaimed, her chest now heaving with anger more than desire. "Well, quite aside from the fact that I already have a lover who suits me fine, I don't like you, Dukat. And that's not just because of all the pain and suffering you caused my people in the past. In fact, if you were a Bajoran Resistance fighter, I still wouldn't like you. You're a creep, Dukat. You are egotistical, self-satisfied, cruel, arrogant... You're so wrapped up in yourself that it has never occurred to you I might not be interested in your advances. There's why."

"Well, I'm glad to know one of those reasons isn't that you don't actually want me," he said calmly.

She was so enraged it was all she could do not to slap the smug grin off his face. In fact, she was so enraged it was a split second before she realised she should respond to his statement.

"I don't want you," she protested, but it was already too late. He had taken her hesitation as an admission that there was some truth in what he had said. His delighted smile was proof of that.

She pushed past him and opened the door.

"Out," she said.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during "Return to Grace". The former head of the Occupation and the Resistance fighter discover they may have more in common than they thought.

He bowed slightly and complied. She obviously didn't know what she wanted herself, so how was he to work it out? However, he couldn't help lingering as he passed her in the doorway. The scent was unmistakable; whatever was going on in her mind, it wasn't enough to bring her body under control. Although he knew Cardassian pheromones could be quite compelling for Bajorans, it was equally a fact that a little discipline could bring those effects under control. If she really felt no attraction whatsoever for him, she would not be letting her body emit such a clear indication of the contrary. Still, perhaps he shouldn't be surprised at an uneducated former Resistance fighter giving him such mixed signals.

However, he knew he had to believe her words rather than her pheromones. She seemed pretty sure she shouldn't take him, even if she wanted to. He told himself he should be happy enough that she wanted him; goodness knows that was progress in itself. It had been a while since he had sensed anything so intense from a Bajoran woman, and he was flattered to think a man his age still had it in him to attract a handsome young woman. He had known that, of course, but it was nice to have tangible proof.

He told himself her refusal was clear enough and he should go back to his quarters, or take another brisk walk, but her scent was truly intoxicating. They were still standing in the doorway of her room, and he took an involuntary step towards her.

"You take one step closer and it will be very painful for you, Dukat," she menaced.

He had no doubt part of her meant that in earnest. But he was now too preoccupied with the part that didn't, the part that seemed to be calling out for him to take her in his arms. He was conscious of his own pheromones and noticed how her breasts were heaving with her uneven breath, how amazed she looked as he took the step closer, calling her bluff yet again.

He was now so close all he needed to do was lean towards her for his chest to touch hers. She shied away slightly, pressing her back against the side of the door and turning her head to one side as his mouth neared her smooth neck. But then she seemed to remember where she was and what he was doing, because her face suddenly turned back towards his, its expression less than welcoming.

She tried to slip back through the door, but he caught her arm as she moved, and pulled her back towards him.

"What do you want, Major?" he asked. A straight answer would have been most welcome, as he was thoroughly puzzled by her behaviour. But instead, all he got was the fulfilment of her earlier promise.

An elegant sweep of her arm freed it from his grasp as she swung about, throwing enough of her weight into a punch to his chest to make him groan with pain. He instinctively countered her next blow, seizing both her arms and trying to position his legs to trip her up. Under normal circumstances, he would probably have succeeded, but it occurred to him that in the present situation, knocking her to the ground might have some ramifications he could do without. At least, in a corridor.

She apparently had no such qualms. While he hesitated, she broke free from his hands, threw a hand chop to his neck cartilage that made him see stars, and used her left heel to hit his ankle and make him fall. He fell to the ground with a thud, but scrambled to his feet almost as quickly, just in time to counter her as she lunged at him once more. She pushed him against the wall on the other side of the corridor, though he couldn't work out exactly what her manoeuvre would achieve. In effect, all it did was give him an opportunity to take the advantage. He wrapped his arms around her waist and picked her up.

Surprised by his move, she placed her hands on his shoulders to regain her balance as he lifted her off the floor. The feeling of his unfamiliar ridges under her fingers combined with his scent to make her forget any desire to hit him. In fact, she was beginning to wonder if it wasn't time to give up the unequal struggle. Thoughts of Bajor, Shakaar and Deep Space Nine were nothing compared to the feel of his alien body pressed against hers.

They stared at each other. Leaning against the wall, breathless and in considerable pain from the bruise on his chest, he looked up at her face. It bore such an expression of amazement he couldn't help but smile. She saw his delighted smile and found herself returning it. He hugged her body against his, conscious that she could feel the humidity in his groin, but too turned on by her radiating warmth to worry about embarrassment. They were both silent, breathing in the desire of the other, neither daring to move. As her body slid inside the material of her dress, she was gradually slipping down his front, and the sensation was exquisite for both of them.

But they let go of each other in a hurry when they heard the sound of a door swishing open across the corridor. He remained against the wall, but she took a quick leap away from him as soon as her feet touched the ground. They turned towards the sound and watched with embarrassment as Damar emerged from his room. He looked at them both, obviously puzzled to see them there.

"Is everything all right, sir? I heard a noise."

And you waited patiently until the noise had stopped, thought Dukat irritably. He looked up at the ceiling, willing himself to calm down before he did his second in command an injury. Once he had recovered a little from the shock of the interruption, he looked at Damar and said, in a quietly menacing voice, "Yes, everything is all right."

Damar looked them both over with slight distaste. He obviously didn't approve of his commanding officer groping Bajoran dignitaries in public places. Dukat knew the man was too far away to sense them, but there was the possibility that he had seen them before Kira moved away. And anyway, it wouldn't take much imagination to guess what they had been doing, if only based on the observation of their irregular breaths and the major's flushed face. Dukat noted the latter detail himself as Damar wisely went back into his quarters. Kira's face had actually turned a very attractive shade of pink, deepening the hue of the ambient lighting.  
   
He turned to look at Damar's closed door and debated whether he should try to explain the situation to his second in command tomorrow, or just leave it up to the man's discretion not to mention this incident. In the meantime, he was quite speechless with embarrassment. If only she had attacked him while they were still in her quarters.

She was quiet. As he looked towards the door, he could just see her out of the corner of his eye, a blurry image of pink and red. She appeared to be leaning against the wall now, and then he realised she was looking at him. He turned to return the look and was surprised to find she was now smiling. He smiled back, and her smile widened to a grin. He grinned as well. Then they both began to laugh. Her laughter was lower and softer than the first time he had heard it, when she had been in hysterics over him sitting on a sandspine. But it was a relief to have her laughing beside him.

"Interesting evening," he said gently.

That made her laugh again, and he felt confident enough to move closer to her and stroke her cheek with the back of his hand, just as he had done before. There was a certain purity in Bajoran features which had always charmed him. It was a delight to be able to run his hands over her unadorned face and watch it become more serious under his touch.

"So, how about continuing this somewhere else?" he suggested, using his most seductive voice.

His voice was seductive, all right, but she shook her head, placing her hand on his chest to push him away. He obediently stopped caressing her face and took a step back, though he did roll his eyes slightly. He obviously had her down as someone who didn't know what she wanted.

"I don't think that's a good idea," she said.

"Feels like a good idea to me," he protested.

She didn't answer. The truth was, she was afraid of having a bad conscience afterwards if she gave in. She would not be able to confide in any of her friends, and though there were plenty of things she had chosen to keep to herself over the past few years, she preferred to keep their number as low as possible. Anyway, it would be the worst possible betrayal of Shakaar. To sleep with another man would be bad enough, but to make that other man Gul Dukat would be unforgivable. Besides, she had said the truth when she said she didn't like him. And it didn't take much for her to convince herself someone as fond of bragging as he was was probably no good in bed. In the meantime, she was a little distracted by the current state of his shirt.

He noticed she was looking him over a bit curiously, and remembered with sudden embarrassment that he was wearing a Klingon shirt. He automatically looked down at his chest, and found the shirt was almost completely unwrapped. Great. Damar could be in no doubt about what had happened. He self-consciously tied it up again.

Having rearranged his person to his satisfaction, he straightened up and looked down his nose at her. She was uncomfortable in the knowledge that he could see a lot more of her than she could make out of him in the darkness of the corridor. He then looked away, as if to seek inspiration in the contemplation of their plain surroundings. He sighed and then looked at her again. For a moment, his expression seemed almost apologetic, and definitely embarrassed. But as his grey eyes ran over her face and body, she saw a little smile creep up on his lips.

"I must apologise, Major," he said. "I am normally a better host than this."

"I guess you don't make a habit of jumping on your guests in corridors," she said with a grin.

"Not really," he said, before adding, "I may be growing old and forgetful, Major, but as I recall, you were the one who jumped on me."

She just smiled and looked at the bumps and dips of his profile outlined against the reddish backdrop of the corridor. From what she had felt when he held her earlier, he was probably in a great deal of discomfort right now. Her mind brought up the recent memory of his arms firmly wrapped around her waist, every bulge and ridge of his body pressing against her through their thin clothes, the incredible expression of delight on his upturned face when he sensed her own desire. Her throat was dry at the very memory. It was lucky Damar had interrupted them.

She had to get away from him before she felt tempted to do it again. She dragged herself away from the wall and made her way slowly around him, praying to the Prophets he wouldn't touch her as she passed.

He didn't. He just leant against the wall and watched her walk towards her door. He was evidently more affected than she thought. Relieved, she took a few steps along the corridor, and was just about to reach for the controls again when she heard his husky voice behind her.

"Are you sure you wouldn't like something to drink, Major?"

He wrapped his arms confidently around her and this time, she did lean back against him. She did want something to drink -- the air on the ship was hot, and she was feeling a little dehydrated by her desire anyway -- but she really didn't think it would be wise to drink with him. This was Gul Dukat holding her in his arms, after all, not just some stranger. Whether that was a good thing or not remained to be seen. She would never have allowed any stranger this close to her. Then why Dukat? She was as puzzled by her behaviour as he was.

"You never give up, do you?" she said, disengaging herself gently from his arms.

She turned around to face him and found her eyes were level with his nose. She was quite used to glaring up at people, so that was not what made her uncomfortable. But turning around placed her nose too near the glands in his neck for comfort, and the residue of his desire made her head spin. She had half intended to attack him again, to make up some excuse to be angry with him, to punish him for making her feel like this. But she knew where that would lead after what had just happened. She sighed. This had to be one of the worst jokes of Nature; why should Bajorans be so sensitive to Cardassian pheromones when the two species were designed to live their lives out on two separate planets light-years away from each other? She wasn't even on heat, for the Prophets' Sake!

A little nagging voice in her mind reminded her this wasn't simply a physical reaction to his pheromones. She ignored it.

"I can't do this, Dukat. I can't do this to myself, I can't do it to Shakaar, and... I don't think it would be very fair on you, either."

"Well, I'm glad you've considered it seriously enough to think up some good reasons not to. But I'm serious about having a drink. I can assure you I am perfectly capable of behaving myself. I would just appreciate your company. Let's say it would be a chance to practice my Bajoran."

"I don't think your Bajoran needs any practice," she said gently. "Naprem taught you well."

"She knew plenty about languages," he said gently, averting his eyes as the same sorrowful expression crossed his face.

He took her hand in his and turned it so that the palm was facing upwards. He then traced a line from her wrist to her middle finger. His fingers tickled her and her hand closed automatically on them. It was a Cardassian gesture, a farewell of some sort, as she vaguely recalled. After a moment, he disengaged his fingers from hers and let go of her hand.

"You're right, Major. It's late and you should be going to bed. I'll see you tomorrow."

More than a little surprised at his sudden change of mind, she opened her door. Once she had walked in, she turned and just caught sight of him framed in the doorway, looking strange and dishevelled in his outlandish costume. The expression on his face was... rather wistful.

The door closed and she sat down on the bed. She pulled up the dress she was wearing and buried her nose in it. As she had expected, she would have to take it off -- its smell alone would be enough to give her a sleepless night. Accordingly, she took it off and lay back on the bed with a sigh. The first thought in her mind was naturally for Dukat.

She had hated that man ever since the first time she had heard of him -- it was strange to think things had changed to the point where she had actually let him hold her in his arms without so much as a protest. It was true that her attitude towards his people was different now. The Prophets had not taught her to be completely unforgiving. It was against their orders to kill and hate as she had done for so many years, and she had often wondered if she should try to make amends for what she had done. The fighter in her argued that Cardassians like Dukat had made no atonement for their crimes, but as a faithful follower of the Prophets, she felt she should strive to be a good girl from now on, forgiving her enemies as the Prophets commanded. Which should also include forgiving Gul Dukat.

For brief moments in recent months, she had seen past his carefully erected facade. She knew she would never forget the sight of Dukat, kneeling in the sand of the barren planet, weeping on the grave of his lost lover. Much as she hated the idea, she had wondered if the Prophets hadn't thrown him in with her twice in such a short time precisely so that she would learn more about him, and perhaps even forgive him for all the harm he had done. They had waited until her wounds had heeled, until she was sufficiently happy with her own life and Bajor's political situation to view her defeated enemies in a more favourable light. Maybe there was some reason why they wanted her to be closer to Dukat in particular. But if there was, it surely wasn't simply for her to go to bed with him.

She dismissed the thought of sex with Dukat as too dangerous to consider in her present state and decided to focus on the way he had left her. She guessed his abrupt decision was due to the fact that she had mentioned Naprem and she couldn't help wondering about this woman who had meant so much to Gul Dukat that he could hardly bring himself to mention her name. It seemed logical enough that he wouldn't want to discuss Naprem with her, not when he was making such misguided efforts to seduce her. But she couldn't help thinking that this woman, whoever she had been aside from Dukat's evidently beloved mistress, had also been Ziyal's mother. It was all very well him warning her about Ziyal's physical particularities, but she felt she could perhaps have done with a little detail on the girl's mother, too.

She tried to imagine what sort of woman would suit Dukat. Whatever Tora Naprem had, it was obviously enough to keep Dukat's affection for at least fourteen years, judging from Ziyal's age when he arranged to send them to Lessepia. Admittedly, Ziyal's existence alone could suffice to explain that, if Dukat had simply felt duty- bound to the mother of his illegitimate child. That was Shakaar's opinion, of course, but then Shakaar was not prepared to put anything past Dukat as far as scheming went. He even went so far as to argue that Dukat's tears on Naprem's grave were purely intended to get Kira's sympathy. That was something she could not accept; Dukat had been crying well before she came out of the Ravenok, and there was the added matter of his 'intention' to kill Ziyal. Now that she knew exactly what Dukat had suffered on account of the girl, she could see how a mind as unscrupulous as his had come to such a cruel decision. He knew bringing her back with him would ruin his already faltering career, so eliminating her would have eliminated the problem. But there was obviously some glimmer of a conscience in his tortuous Cardassian mind, or he would never have been so stupid as to tell her, of all people, his intention. And she could not forget how pleased he had looked when he finally embraced his daughter.

Those were all things she had tried to explain to her lover, but the First Minister was still not convinced. And, of course, she could well see his point. As far as he was concerned, Dukat was a machiavellian killer with the devious mind characteristic of his race. But Shakaar didn't know even the little she knew about Dukat. He hadn't seen him mourning his lover or embracing his daughter, he hadn't laughed with him and fought with him, or felt his arms around... She decided to abandon that particular train of thought again, but her body struggled to remind her exactly how good the Cardassian's arms had felt. She knew they had only felt that way because of her susceptibility to his pheromones, of course.

She turned on her communicator to make it translate and ordered various ingredients to be made into a beverage. As could be expected, the replicator did not have all the right products programmed in it, but it came up with the bright suggestion that those particular items would be available from the sickbay. It didn't explain where that was, but a little painstaking research on the terminal revealed the route to follow. She sighed and berated herself for not bringing her bag off the Groumall -- but how should she have known that idiot Dukat was going to blow the bloody ship up? She decided the trip to sickbay was worth it. The thought of her being so open to Dukat's physical attraction irritated her, and she wanted to make quite certain her body had quietened down before she even attempted to go to sleep. A good old Bajoran recipe would sort that out for her.

She put on her uniform trousers and undershirt and ventured out into the corridor again. She was hoping against hope that Dukat had gone to bed and wasn't roaming the ship as before, and actually believed her hopes had been fulfilled, until she reached sickbay and found him there. The Prophets definitely had a hand in this. He was stripped to the waist, standing in the middle of the floor with his back to her. The light was as dim there as it was in the rest of the ship -- Klingons obviously shared with Cardassians their dislike of bright lights. But she could see the lean muscles tense and ripple under the thick grey skin, the ridges rising and falling with the movement of his right arm, the shine on his straight black hair as it fell in lifeless locks on his bowed head. She stood in the doorway, staring at the sight of so much of his body bared before her. This evening was really becoming stranger and stranger. His nakedness, the alien sickbay, the late hour, the things that had happened earlier all combined to create a feeling of unreality in her mind, as if she were in a dream. But she knew it was no dream when he turned around and stared at her.

He had the same expression of delighted amazement as before. It was quite sweet, she found herself thinking, before reminding herself that she had no right to be finding Dukat sweet in any way. Once he had turned around completely and was staring at her, she saw that he was holding a regenerator. There was still a black bruise on his chest, where she had hit him earlier, and he had obviously been in the process of repairing the damage.

After they had stared at each other for a moment, he suddenly became aware of his state of undress, and reached for his shirt, discarded on the operating table.

"Are you following me around, Major?" he said in his maddeningly suave voice, holding the shirt self-consciously in front of his chest.

"Yes, of course. I have nothing better to do." She didn't often resort to sarcasm, but the repartee was too good to miss.

"Well, of course," he said without any reaction beyond a smile. "I'm irresistible."

"Ha," she guffawed, rolling her eyes.

He put on his shirt, turning his back to do so, as if she hadn't already got a good view of his chest ridges.

"I just came down to repair the damage you did to my person. I must admit, you're not a woman who does things by half. That bruise is quite painful."

She noticed he hadn't finished treating it, and wondered if that was just because he was embarrassed to remain bare-chested in front of her.

"Well, I'll leave you to your occupation," he concluded, taking the regenerator with him as he walked past her into the corridor. She watched him walk by, and waited to see if he would really leave things at that. Of course he didn't. He was no sooner in the corridor than he turned back.

"The invitation for a drink and talk still stands, you know."

"You have got to be the most stubborn man I've ever met! The answer is still no, Dukat," she exclaimed, more amused than irritated. She wondered if she would ever have the same respect for Dukat as an adversary after what she had seen tonight, or if, every time she met him, she would remember how he looked half-naked. Not as bad as she had imagined based on her earlier observation. His body looked far better under his bare grey skin than a thin maroon shirt.

"I have a weakness for pursuing lost causes," he said gracefully.

That made her smile. "Obviously," she said.

His grey eyes remained fixed on her for a while, and he was silent. For a man who talked so much, he was remarkably good at using silence in a conversation. Then he nodded gently.

"Well, you know where to find me if you do want to talk."

"...Or rather, listen to you," she couldn't help pointing out.

"Oh, I could tell you some fascinating things, you know, Major. You shouldn't dismiss everything I say based simply on the fact that I say so much. I know you and your Terran friends believe that I am over talkative and find that a sign of weakness. But language is far too precious a gift to be used simply as a tool for communication. It is an art form in itself, and to be able to craft a simple conversation into a brilliant masterpiece of rhetoric is one of the most admired accomplishments of Cardassian society. I do realise that, as a Bajoran, you have no interest in the accomplishments of Cardassian society, and that speech is nothing more for you than a string of words, a means to the end of communication, but I was raised to see every exchange as an opportunity to exercise my mind, to gauge the culture and erudition of the person I am talking to, while revealing my own knowledge and craft. So you see, Major, it is quite unfair of you to dismiss my discourse as empty words. Every one of those words has been carefully selected, and a lot of thought has gone into the form chosen to express the meaning I want to impart."

If he hadn't been such an awful person, she might nearly have admired his long-winded speeches. Given a good subject, and an audience he wanted to impress, such as herself, he could go on for ages, aligning perfectly constructed sentences one after the other, each one adding a little more of the information he wanted to impart, while not quite making the point, until all the sentences were completed and added up to express the full meaning of his speech. His rhetoric was impeccable -- the sentiments expressed often less so.

He had given plenty of speeches when he was the Prefect of Bajor. His automatically translated addresses to the Bajoran population, eloquent expressions of the latest propaganda from the Central Command, were broadcast on a far too regular basis on the official information services and at every street corner in every village. The sound of that voice droning on had been the backdrop for most of her adult life.

But his speeches sounded quite different in Bajoran, where his Cardassian accent and occasional Netapka vowels combined to attenuate the supercilious tone he seemed to use in Kardasi. Still, she rather regretted getting him started. He could go on as much as he liked about Cardassian customs, but as far as she was concerned, Dukat simply liked the sound of his own voice. She knew he could go on for ages if she didn't interrupt him. Fortunately, he did pause to see what effect his speech was having on her, and she took the opportunity to turn the monologue back into a conversation.

"Well, I'm glad there's an actual reason why you talk so much, other than the fact that you like listening to yourself talking. But as you said, I don't have the same view of language, so I fail to see why you bother. You could just get to the point, and save us all some trouble."

He shrugged his shoulders and, to her dismay, took a step towards her.

"I'm afraid I just can't. It has been bred into me ever since I first learned to speak Kardasi."

"You're speaking Bajoran now, so you could just conform to Bajoran traditions."

"Ah, but the added advantage of making long speeches in Bajoran is that I can impress you with my knowledge of your language." She wasn't sure if he was teasing her or if it was just part of his usual bragging.

"I don't see why you bother. Garak was right, you know, I'm not impressed by your constant posturing," she told him, placing her hands on her hips and moving a little closer to him.

"I am not posturing," he protested a little crossly. She couldn't help but smile at his petulant tone. "Besides," he added, "Garak is certainly not the right person to give advice on that subject. He knows nothing about women."

"I am not 'women', Dukat, and he seems to know more about me than you do," she argued.

"Well, I am glad to know our friend the tailor is so well informed."

She just cast him a deadly look which had served her well with suitors in the past. Then his words sank in.

"What do you mean, he knows nothing about women?"

He smiled egregiously and spread his hands to indicate his innocence.

"Or so I've heard."

She hadn't expected that. "Garak? It never occurred to me."

"I hope it has occurred to your friend the doctor."

She guffawed. "Now that is definitely an image I don't need to have rolling around my head..." He laughed with her, and she took a step nearer to see him better. She became more serious as she thought about the long-standing enmity between the two men. "Speaking of Garak," she added, "I presume you won't want Ziyal to associate with him too much."

He looked surprised, as if the thought had not occurred to him. "I fail to see what she would have in common with an old man like him anyway. He is my age, for the Prophets' sakes!"

She was not sure she would agree with his description of the pair of them as 'old men'. But she decided not to say anything, as Dukat's ego probably didn't need that sort of bolstering.

"Well, they will be the only two Cardassians on the station. I'll introduce her to Bajorans and Terrans, of course, but she might find she misses her own people."

"My people," he corrected, coming nearer to emphasise his speech. "You introduce her to some nice Bajorans and keep her away from Garak. I'd rather she made friends with Terrans than with him. How about that child, Sisko's son, what's his name?"

"Jake?"

"Yes, at least he's the same age."

"Actually, Jake's a bit younger than Ziyal. But I'm sure she won't have any trouble making friends. Though you said you wanted her to explore both sides of her heritage. She may find she wants to see some Cardassians as well."

"I'd rather she didn't explore anything with Garak," he said, in a tone which brooked no contradiction.

"All right. She won't," she said seriously. "I promise."

She found herself looking up into his grey face, and it reminded her how close she had been to that face only a while earlier. He moved closer to her, but she held her ground, staring right back at him.

"Go to bed, Dukat," she said reasonably.

"Now you sound like my mother," he said ruefully.

"And your mother sounds like a sensible woman."

She caught a mild look of surprise on his face, before he smiled and turned away, muttering in Kardasi, "[Bajoran women]".

"What about them?" she snapped.

"I couldn't live without them," he said turning to blow her a kiss.

The sight of a Cardassian blowing anyone a kiss was not incongruous enough to distract her from the meaning of the gesture.

"Do you want another one of those?" she exclaimed, pointing to his chest. His teasing was getting on her nerves.

His eyes followed her indication and he grinned.

"Only if you insist. I had no idea you took such an interest in Klingon mating rituals, Major. I hope Shakaar has a good regenerator."

"That's not funny, Dukat."

"I never said it was meant to be. I'm sincerely worried about the health of the First Minister of Bajor being entrusted to your delicate hands." He rubbed the bruise as if to remind her exactly how hard she had hit him. "Unless, of course, you need to take out your unused *energy* on someone else." The word he used for energy was used almost exclusively in sexual situations, and she felt her temper flare up the minute he said it.

Once upon a time, she would have attacked him again for making such insinuations about her lover. But she found she could stand a lot more of his teasing than she used to. She had gained a great deal of patience since the likes of him had ceased to rule her planet, and her relationship with Shakaar being secure as it was, she didn't feel too threatened by Dukat's jibes in general. But her slightly guilty conscience about letting him hug her so easily earlier made her uncomfortable with his sexual reference.

"You _dobarsida_," she hissed, using a word that cast enough doubt on his own sexual prowess to revenge the slight on Shakaar's. It wasn't a very vicious insult, in fact, it was rather amusing, but it meant what it meant.

He smiled, of course.

"It's been a while since someone called me that."

"Well, she must have been a sensible woman, too," she said a little pettishly. Men didn't usually use that insult.

His smile became gentler, and he looked away thoughtfully.

"Not always," he said, his voice rumbling barely above a half- whisper, as if he were remembering something. Or was it someone? "But she did know some pretty nasty insults," he added, apparently pulling himself back to the present. "Well, I see I have no choice but to comply to your desires, so I'll take my leave."

Her temper died down as rapidly as it had flared up. There was something about his reluctance that intrigued her.

"Is that what all this is about?" she asked gently as he turned his back on her. "Do I remind you of her?"

"Not really," he said without turning back. Then he looked at her over his shoulder. "She was in love with me, after all," he said in his most charming voice.

"All right, you can stop right there," she laughed, raising her hands in a slightly exaggerated gesture.

He nodded, and after a moment's hesitation, walked away.

"Dukat," she called after him. "It's unlike you not to want to talk about something."

With all the body language of irritation he stopped and turned back towards her.

"Major, is this some Bajoran custom I don't know about? Do you always conduct extensive personal conversations in corridors?"

"Dukat," she pleaded, ignoring his remark. "She was Ziyal's mother, don't you think I might do with knowing a bit more about her?"

He sighed and looked down, fiddling with the regenerator in his hands.

"I don't want to talk about her," he admitted a little weakly.

She walked up the corridor to him, and placed her hand on his arm as he turned away again.

"Why not?" she asked.

He was visibly surprised by her concern, though it was difficult to imagine he could be more surprised than she was.

"Dukat, you can't bottle it up inside like this. You need to talk to someone."

"Oh? I thought you said you didn't want to listen to me talk. Anyway, I wasn't aware that you were considering a new career as a Federation counsellor, Major," he remarked sarcastically.

She ignored the jibe and stared up at him, slightly conscious that he must be quite pleased to have her whole attention all to himself, while also a little concerned that he didn't seem to be enjoying it.

"Maybe you do need counselling, Dukat. I know how much you loved Naprem, and I find it just a little strange that you refuse to talk about her at all. You keep mentioning her, and then the next thing I know, you're walking away."

"There's nothing to say." He hesitated and then added more passionately, "Why do you want to know about her anyway? I fail to see what business it is of yours."

"I'm just interested to know more about Ziyal's mother. If I'm going to be taking care of her daughter, your daughter" -- she used the plural -- "you could at least tell me something about Naprem."

"I'm sure you are interested, Major," he said, visibly agitated. "Curious, more likely, to know what sort of woman could have loved me. I was the head of the Occupation, the Prefect of Bajor, for the Prophets' sakes. You know exactly who I was and what I did in those days. And so did Naprem. And yet she loved me, she lived with me and she bore me a daughter who is the most precious of my eight children. I don't want to talk to you about her because to talk about her to you of all people is to defile her memory. To you, she will be nothing more than a despicable traitor, someone to despise and hate. And I can do without your moral self-righteousness."

She shook her head. "If you think I am not capable of rising above my personal experience of that time, to learn about Naprem with an open mind, then you really don't know me all that well. I have changed."

"You don't seem very keen on rising above your personal experience to learn about me. Or accept that I might have changed, too."

"That's because I'm not so interested in you," she said with a faint smile. "But I am interested in Ziyal, and you are her father. I can't make abstraction of that. Now, I know plenty about you and what you did. But I know nothing about Naprem -- who she was, what she did, how much of her is in Ziyal today."

"A lot," he said simply. He breathed in deeply and raised his face to the ceiling, as he sometimes did when he was irritated. "Now, Major, I think I will go back to my quarters. If you want me to tell you about Naprem, feel free to follow me," he added, the very image of patience.

"You wish," she said, giving him an annoyed look.

He chuckled and walked away.

She watched him go and wondered if that was the end of it. She was still curious, but not enough to fall into the trap of going to his quarters. Whatever the good reasons for his refusal to discuss Naprem, he had seen an opportunity to get her where he wanted her, and she just wasn't going to give him the satisfaction. Though she was rather curious to know what would happen if she did accept the invitation. Wouldn't he be surprised!

He was nearing the bend that led back to their quarters when, as she had expected, he stopped and looked back at her. He leant nonchalantly against the wall, striking an attractive pose in the red light, and she could just make out that his eyes were running appreciatively over her tightly clad body. Annoyed by his sudden and rude appraisal of her person, she decided to fight him with the same weapon. A few years ago, she wouldn't have known where to start. But she now had enough confidence in her sexual attractiveness to know she could pull off this kind of intimidation, especially with someone as susceptible to her charm as Dukat. The thought she might gain the upper hand by flirting with him ever so innocently gave her some measure of satisfaction, and she set to it immediately.

She let her eyes start at his boots and then move slowly up his dark trousers, lingering deliberately on his crotch before rising up to observe the crumpled folds of the shirt, the long bare neck with its leathery throat, the narrow face and its elaborate pattern of lines and curlicues, fashioned by some freak fancy of Nature into a semblance of her own species' features. He had said he was handsome in his youth, and she could just about imagine it as she looked at him. She had never admired Cardassian looks, for obvious reasons, but Dukat's face was becoming all too familiar these days, and she was beginning to see its good sides. She became aware of his slightly untrue eyes fixed upon hers and smiled when she saw the confusion in them.

He had probably been preparing to make some fascinating speech to encourage her to come with him, but her efforts had paid off, and he was quite speechless. Maybe she didn't need to be so afraid of him after all. She walked up to him confidently, her calm gaze perhaps just a little menacing.

He didn't look so self-confident now.

"Careful, Major. I might be tempted to think you actually mean it," he said.

"Don't get your hopes up too high," she warned him.

He nodded and indicated the way down the corridor, inviting her by the gesture to go with him. They walked along to his quarters and stopped outside the door. Without even looking at her, he just opened the door and walked in, leaving her free to follow or not. She hesitated, staying in the doorway to hold the door open, but not quite sure if she really wanted to go in. She looked around the room. This being the captain's quarters, the first room was a sitting room with large leather sofas and various items of Klingon decoration -- a bat'leth, a sculpture of Kahless, the insignia of a Klingon captain hung up on the wall. But she also took in Dukat's anthracite armour discarded on a sofa and a Cardassian portable display unit on the table.

He turned the light on.

"Do you want it any brighter than this?" he asked, standing with his hand on the controls. He increased the luminosity slightly. The light took on an orange tinge, veering gradually to yellow as he pressed the controls.

"That's all right," she said, raising her hand and blinking as the room came into proper focus.

He cleared the armour off the couch and went to put it in the adjoining room, which she presumed was the bedroom. He had taken the regenerator with him, probably to finish off the work on his bruise. She wondered if he would change while he was in there; he was apparently quite as embarrassed by his costume as she had been by hers. Certainly, with her in her uniform, he must feel at a disadvantage wearing that shirt. He might even want to put his own uniform on.

While she was curious to see how he was going to handle the situation, the temptation was strong to leave and go back to her own room. That had, after all, been her original intention. But running away was hardly the brave thing to do, and if she really wanted to prove to herself that she could handle Dukat, she was better off staying right where she was. Anyway, she might learn something in the process.

He came back while she was still procrastinating and she was delighted to find he hadn't changed after all, though he had combed his hair a little. No, not delighted, of course – why would anything about his appearance delight her?

"Do come in, Major" he offered gracefully, noticing she was still standing in the doorway.

She came in a little hesitantly, and settled on one of the couches. It creaked unfamiliarly as her body sank into the shiny leather, and she self-consciously squirmed into a more comfortable position.

"What would you like to drink?" he asked, peering at the replicator to discover if it would work without a translator.

"A glass of water would do."

"Vambîk ûngašvîh/om h/înob," he ordered in what was obviously Klingon with a thick Cardassian accent.

The replicator thought about that for a moment, and then a small container appeared in the slot. Dukat took it out and brought it up to his nose to smell its contents. He was apparently satisfied that it was water, because he handed it to her.

"Thank you," she said, just a little too late to be polite. She tasted the beverage and found it was similar to stale Bajoran water. Presumably Qo'nos water was a little different from the water on Bajor.

While she was puzzling over the strange taste of the water, he helped himself to a goblet of blood wine from the vat near the replicator and came to settle on the couch opposite hers. She found this rather a relief, having feared for a moment that he really would take advantage of the occasion and come and sit beside her. Not that she wouldn't be able to cope if he did, but it would be a terrible bore to have to fight him off, and it would mean she would never learn any more about the mother of his daughter.

"So, do you want to talk about her?" she asked.

"No, I don't," he snapped. "What's this sudden fascination with my private life, anyway?"

"Dukat, do I have to explain everything five times? I've already told you --"

"Yes, you want to know more about Ziyal's mother. I do wonder, though, if your desire to hear about Naprem isn't prompted by something else than concern about her daughter." She steeled herself, waiting to hear him out before throttling him. "I believe you are less interested in her influence on Ziyal than the fact that she was my... that she was so close to me." She noticed the correction and wondered what he was about to say. Mistress? He had rejected that title for Naprem once before.

"That must really bother you, Major," he continued. "You would probably prefer to think that I was feared, hated or despised by everyone around me, rather than that someone actually loved me. But don't worry, Major, I got plenty of disdain from my wife and mother. In fact, it is a great consolation to me that you will probably never meet either of them. The three of you would have far too much in common. This Quadrant would not be safe if you got together." She wondered if he was trying to distract her from Naprem with this train of thought. "And it is true that none of my collaborators have been particularly close. You can't have friends when you're courting power. But I have not been so unlucky as to meet only people who disliked me. Naprem was different."

She had expected him to elaborate, to continue his monologue following his usual habit. But he just stopped speaking and stared into his mug of wine. His hand went up to his temple in the typical Cardassian gesture of self-consolation. She watched as his fingers ran along the ridge above his left brow and then moved down to caress the half circle around his eye. The movement of his thin fingers over his grey skin reminded her of something. Her mind struggled to retrieve the memory, and then fought equally hard to repress it as it became clearer.

She remembered standing in the sparse undergrowth of the Averos forest. The winter breeze was chilling her face and the bare hand with which she held the disrupter was blue with cold. It had been the coldest winter in living memory, a time when the Cardassians, driven indoors by the chill, had loosened their grip on the land. The soldier was kneeling in the mud, his eyes fixed on her boots, his hands, freed by the over-confidence of his captors, automatically stroking his eye ridges as his whole body shuddered with cold and fear. 'Kill him,' said Shakaar.

She dragged her thoughts back to the present, and this other Cardassian sitting opposite her.

"I'm sorry," she said. "You don't have to talk about her if you don't want to."

He continued to observe the red liquid in his goblet for a moment, before seeming to become aware of what he was doing. He put the mug down and placed his hands on his knees. The nervous tension was too much, though, and he brought his hands together, his fingers intertwining and separating as he became lost in his thoughts again. She sipped her foul water and wondered how to leave him to his thoughts without being totally impolite.

"She was from the Kishahel valley in the Netapka province." His voice was a low growl and she looked up in surprise. "She used the funniest expressions sometimes," he added.

Kira waited for him to say more, and when no more was forthcoming, she prompted him. "How did you meet her?"

He hesitated, but then decided he did want to discuss this with her after all. Perhaps it would make her realise that he didn't have such a heart of stone.

"A friend of mine was the head of the Linguistics department at the Bajoran Centre for Science. Naprem was one of his assistants back in those days."

A little Bajoran woman with hair dyed jet black, her mouth twitching in amusement as he discussed something totally inane with Inquisitor Gareid. The crop failures? The perspective of the cold winter ahead? It didn't matter, all he could think about was this woman with her braided hair, the twinkle of sympathy in her eye as the Inquisitor pontificated on about matters nobody cared about. Finally, Gareid sent her to get them some drink or other, and he pretended to have seen someone of his acquaintance in the crowd, and accosted her as she poured out the kanaar. "Anyway, don't you know Bajorans don't like Cardassians?" she told him as she pushed past him with the drinks. But she did turn to smile at him as she disappeared in the crowd.

"A collaborator." Kira's sharp voice sliced through his memories like a knife. A collaborator. The Centre for Science was a Cardassian creation that played a key role in the propaganda from the Central Command. Of course anyone associated with it would be a traitor in her eyes. How could he have expected this woman to understand? She probably had the whole Occupation figured out, everyone categorised into little boxes -- the Resistance here, the Oppressors there, the collaborators in a pit in the middle. And there was a label all cut out for her -- Tora Naprem, collaborator.

He could make her realise exactly how stupid her commentary really was. "Well, of course, Major. She was sleeping with me... one could say she had a personal interest in keeping the Cardassians on Bajor."

She looked annoyed; his comment had hit the mark.

"I told you -- you wouldn't have liked her at all," he said smoothly, taking advantage of the situation to indulge in a little 'told you so'. "She hated the Resistance. Really hated them, a lot more than I ever did."

No, that was a lie, there had been one time in his life when he had hated the Resistance. He decided he might as well let her know about that, while he was at it. "At least, until someone took a pot shot at Ziyal when she was about six years old. That changed my views a bit, though I never considered that I should take the Resistance attacks personally. I thought they were simply..." He caught her eye and decided there was no point telling her what he had thought of her sort back then. Fleas attacking a rhinoceros. But fleas with a powerful will to succeed.

"Never mind what I thought. I was just a misguided Cardassian officer following orders," he said sarcastically, putting on an excessively contrite expression. He knew the tune well enough, having heard it from quite a few of his former colleagues. Being associated in any way with the Bajoran Occupation was no longer fashionable -- better to have fought the Federation like a 'hero'. He was pleased to see that brought a smile to her lips, and even more pleased to find she was waiting for him to continue.

"Anyway, Naprem took the Resistance very personally," he continued thoughtfully. "She had calmed down quite a lot by the time I met her, but she never forgave them..." He paused; there were still some things he didn't feel like telling her about. He pursued his reminiscing in a lighter tone. "She used to have a fit when I was hurt by Resistance attacks. That was mostly later, when I was on Terok Nor. I was always grateful that the propaganda services systematically covered up or minimised the extent of the attacks. I knew I was in for an earful if she got wind of what had happened to me. Of course, she always blamed me -- I wasn't careful, I was too overconfident, my guards were incompetent. Anyway, she made a lot of fuss over nothing."

His description of domestic bliss made her smile, but she wasn't too pleased at his depiction of Resistance attacks. Dukat had been notorious for his condescending attitude towards the Resistance. No matter how hard they worked to kill him -- and some of their attempts had come pretty near the mark, she recalled -- they never seemed to convince him to take them as a serious threat. It could be argued, and from what she had heard, frequently was on Cardassia, that this disdainful attitude had played a part in the Cardassian defeat. But at the time, it had proved extremely frustrating for the Bajorans. Apparently, it was not only impossible to kill Dukat, but it was equally impossible to get his attention.

"Is that why she hated them so much?" she said, feeling a sharp edge creep into her voice.

"Oh no, that had nothing to do with me," he said dismissively. His grey eyes met hers and his face became very serious. He was silent for a moment, and then started, "she... When she was fifteen, the local Resistance cell teamed up with some other opportunists in her village and attacked the house her family lived in with her maternal uncle. They beat up every single member of both families, ransacked the house, burned down their crops and slaughtered their cattle. Naprem's mother died a few weeks later, and she always believed it was due to the shock of the attack."

"The Resistance was never kind to collaborators," she said calmly. She had never taken part in these punitive raids herself -- Shakaar considered quite rightly that the Cardassians should be their main targets -- but she knew how common they had been, especially in remote areas where Cardassia didn't maintain such a strong presence. Not that the Cardassians were very keen on protecting collaborators anyway.

"The funny thing is, Major, they weren't really collaborators at all. Oh, they weren't in the Resistance by any means. Like about ninety-five percent of the Bajoran population, they were doing the best they could under the circumstances. Their real problem was that they were landowners doing just a bit better than everyone else. But they did commit one crime -- they let this fifteen-year-old girl fall in love with a Cardassian soldier."

He sipped his blood wine as he let that information sink in. She looked suitably impressed -- so much for the idea he couldn't impress her. He wondered how much he should tell about the life Naprem had led. 'I'm a woman with a past,' she had warned him, when he contacted her after the reception. It had taken her a long time to tell him everything, and at that, it was quite possible there were some things she had still kept to herself. She was as good as any Cardassian when it came to lying. But he remembered how upset he had been when she had told him about this particular incident. Not just an incident, in fact, more like one of the main events that shaped her life.

"Needless to say, there wasn't much of him left when the Bajorans had finished with him," he informed Kira. He stared down at the floor and after a moment's hesitation, added, "I probably don't need to tell you what they did to Naprem." He lifted his gaze once more to hers to see her reaction. He wasn't sure if she would think the punishment was deserved, or if she would feel sorry for Naprem.

Her throat tightened at the look in his eyes. She knew exactly what they had done to Naprem, what they did to any woman who slept with the enemy. It was the price to pay for the ultimate betrayal of their people. She lowered her eyes as she realised she had been wrong. The Resistance had hurt him after all.


	3. Chapter 3

He sighed, picked up the goblet as if to drink from it, and then seemed to change his mind. Instead, he put his hand up to his forehead and his middle finger traced the contour of the drop-shaped growth above his brow. This covered his face enough to protect him from her inquisitive eyes, which had risen up to look at him again. He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and fingers in a weary gesture, wishing he had never brought up that subject. His mind suddenly reminded him of the smooth Bajoran forehead wrinkled with sorrow as she told him what her own people had done to her. What they had done did not touch him in itself -- such an unfortunate experience so long ago in her past was of no consequence to her honour or his own love for her -- but it pained him because it was something that had really hurt her.

"It doesn't matter," he said, trying to express some of the frustration he had felt back then. "It... There is no excuse for living in the past. Bitterness, revenge, regrets, they're all a waste of energy, because you can't change what is done. But when I met Naprem nearly fifteen years later, a part of her was still living in that moment, still so bitter about what had happened, so unforgiving..." It was too hard to talk about Naprem like this, bringing the conversation too near to his real feelings for comfort. If he continued like this, he would bare his pagh to her, and he shuddered to think what she would do with it then.

"It was one of the things that irritated me most about your people," he continued, changing topic slightly to divert his monologue from himself, "this constant reference to the wrongs and rights of the past. As if you go through your lives walking backwards, never prepared to forgive, or forget, or contemplate doing anything new... I'm not speaking for you personally, Major. You are definitely open to new ideas and resolutely turned to the future."

She smiled a little to indicate no offence was taken.

"It wasn't easy at first," he said without any indication as to what he was talking about. "She and I were so different. There was the business of her being Bajoran, of course, which was trouble enough. By the time I met her, she was pretty pro-Cardassian, but there were still innumerable little Bajoran traditions she had to respect, from wearing her earring to throwing salt on the ground before guests came in."

He was about to drink some more of the wine when it occurred to him he was beginning to feel a little light-headed. It had been a while since he had been drunk, but the sensation was unmistakable. He wasn't sure he wanted Major Kira to see him in that state. On the other hand, he doubted she would be staying very long. He looked at the dark red liquid and decided one more sip wasn't going to have him rolling on the floor. It made him feel a lot better about the situation, so he took another one.

"I imagine that's a Netapka custom," she said, never having heard of sprinkling the floor with salt before. She knew she would learn something interesting if she came in with him tonight, though it had not occurred to her it would be an obscure custom from her own planet.

"Oh yes, they have some pretty strange customs down there. She also used to sew a pinch of salt into the hems of Ziyal's garments for good luck. I never saw such a people for worshipping food. Mind you, my mother used to slosh water on my..." there was no word in Bajoran for it so he pointed to the drop shaped protuberance on his forehead, "my this thing, when I had an important event of some sort."

She smiled. "For good luck, too, I presume."

"Either that or she was trying to drown me," he answered jovially. "Anyway, Naprem and I would have these pointless arguments about all sorts of things. She usually won, of course. One of my aides once joked that if she had been religious, I would probably have let her build a shrine in my living-room." He shrugged with a tender smile. "Maybe I would have, too."

"You must miss her a lot," she said.

"Oh, yes, I do," he said with feeling. "I am not one for mulling over things past, but you can't be that close to someone for seventeen years and then forget them overnight." Seventeen years? she thought. It had not occurred to her they had been together that long, though the simple arithmetic she had used earlier made it pretty obvious they had. She regarded Dukat with a slightly heightened respect. When he had first told her about Naprem, she had put it down as an affair, just a good reason to despise Dukat for being unfaithful to his wife, as well as being a war criminal. But he was right, he was a lot more complicated a man than she had thought. And she was right, she did prefer simpler men. They were easier to understand.

But she had to admit as his voice continued that this new side he was baring to her tonight was quite intriguing.

"The hardest thing about the disappearance of the Ravenok was that I had no idea what had happened to it," he continued. "I couldn't even be sure whether she and Ziyal were dead or alive. All I knew was that they were gone and I was totally helpless. I couldn't order further investigations when the mandatory search party came up with nothing, because officially, I had no particular interest in the ship. I couldn't grieve for them in public because no one was supposed to know how much I had lost. I could not share my hopes and fears with anyone because the person I had always shared my innermost thoughts with was Naprem. We made a great couple," he added a little more lightly, as if to tone down the melancholy of his speech.

"It can't have been easy for her all those years," she said, trying to imagine how anyone could have put up with the life Naprem must have led.

He nodded. "It wasn't. I was a high ranking official in the Cardassian military, I was married with seven... no, there were just six back then, so six little Cardassians waiting for me on Prime." He sighed an uncharacteristically melodramatic sigh. "Everything I did, my whole life was built in such a way that there was no place for her. I couldn't introduce her to the people who meant most to me. I couldn't tell anyone about her..."

His eyes fell on the display unit on the table, and he pointed to it.

"If you're really interested, there are some old pictures of her in that unit."

She picked it up and switched it on. It contained a lot more than simply pictures; the main screen indicated she could consult communications archives, as well as personal logs and a testament. The display was in Cardassian and Bajoran, and the different scripts, aligned in different places on the screen, created a strange pattern.

Noticing that she was staring a little blankly at the unit, he got up and leant over her, taking it from her hands to bring up the images he wanted her to see.

The first image was a typical posed Cardassian family picture. Ziyal was about ten years old, her black hair worn long and loose, as her little grey face stared in earnest at the imager. She was standing beside Dukat, who was sitting in full uniform, hands leaning on his knees as if he were about to get up, his head held high, the very image of Cardassian assurance. And then there was Naprem. Conspicuously pink and plump with the onset of middle age, she stood out on the picture, her expression nearly as arrogant as his, her hands neatly folded on the expanse of her bright green robe.

He sighed and switched to the next picture, returning to sit on the other couch before she had time to look at the face which smiled up at her. There could be no doubt who was holding the imager when this picture was taken. Tora Naprem smiled out of the unit, happy and confident on a Summer's day on Bajor. There were hints of a brown and green countryside bathed in sunshine behind her, but most of the picture was focused on her face. It didn't take long for Kira to realise where she had seen that face before. It was round and smooth, with widely spaced, almond-shaped eyes, and thick, sensual lips. Her dark brown hair was down, curling over her family earring and her bare shoulder.

"Ziyal is very like her," she said.

Dukat just nodded.

"I always thought she was like me, for obvious reasons. But the truth is, she is the image of Naprem. I nearly fell over when I first saw Ziyal, when we rescued her."

Her memory of that occasion was that he didn't seem exactly ready to fall over at all. The image of him standing with his rifle pointed at his daughter came to mind.

"I thought I had lost them both," he continued pensively. "And then it turned out I had found Ziyal again, but she was no longer a child, she was a young woman, with Naprem's voice, her eyes, her face... My skin. A very strange combination. I would never have imagined she would turn out so beautiful."

"Yes, she's very pretty," she agreed, wondering how that had come to pass. Certainly the woman on the pictures was no raving beauty, while Ziyal was very attractive.

"It just goes to show that I was wrong. I thought she would be an abomination. I had seen other half-castes before, of course, but the thought of fathering one myself was eminently repugnant. I'm glad to find I was so mistaken."

"Why did you have Ziyal if the thought was so repugnant to you?" she asked.

"I didn't 'have' her," he said with dignity. "Naprem did. Oh, you know what Bajoran women are like -- in fact, you are one, so perhaps you don't fully realise how stubborn you can be," he added with a smile.

She knew that was the general consensus among non-Bajorans.

He drank some wine and looked thoughtful for a moment. "We had been together for three years when Naprem suddenly decided she wanted a child. She was about your age when we first met, so I suppose she felt it was the best time to become a mother. That wasn't a problem in itself -- all she needed was a doctor, a little magic, and she would have the child of her choice. But no, she wanted it to be *my* child." He paused, and then continued, "As I said, I didn't want us to have a child. A bastard half-caste who would belong nowhere and cause nothing but trouble for both of us? Much as I adored Naprem, I knew what we would be letting ourselves in for. Both our species despised us enough as it was for being lovers, but to actually parent a hybrid child was to invite more disdain and hatred... well, you know what happened to me when my people did find out about Ziyal, and most of it was due to her Bajoran blood. Her existence wouldn't have been half as troublesome if she had been a full-blooded Cardassian... But when it came to an argument, Naprem usually had the upper hand," he continued. "She finally convinced me the reward would be worth the risk. And you know, Major, she was quite right. I was telling the truth when I said I didn't regret anything to do with Ziyal. From the moment I made the decision for us to have the child, I knew I was right. Even if it did mean Naprem spent months sneezing and complaining about her ankles."

Kira grinned at his description of a typical Bajoran pregnancy.

"I know Ziyal was worth it," she said.

"Oh, yes. She was a sweet child. In fact, she's a sweet young woman, too. I don't know where she got that from. Naprem thought it was either something she inherited from her maternal grandmother, or maybe it was just that she was subdued by having the two of us around." He had a drink and then went on with a fond look in his eye. "When you think about it, her mere existence is pretty amazing. One half of her Bajoran, the other half Cardassian. One would have thought it would be like trying to mate a vole and a wompat, but no, no technology was needed... and there she was. It was the strangest experience. This plump Bajoran woman, so pink and, and smooth and... Bajoran, holding a baby that looked exactly like all my other children. A little, grey baby with..." still no word for them in Bajoran "...curlicues all over. We noticed the nose ridges later," he added. "That was weird. But she was really beautiful."

And you're really drunk, thought Kira, noticing how disjointed and emotional his speech was becoming. She leant forward with an earnest expression.

"You should be careful with that drink," she said.

"I've only had half a mug," he protested, looking into the goblet.

"Well, I still think you're getting a bit drunk. Maybe that's because blood wine is designed for Klingons, not Cardassians," she said. "You're probably not as resistant as they are," she couldn't help adding.

He gave her his most reasonable look. "I never said I was. Considering their lack of intelligence, I would presume Klingons are probably extremely sturdy. Such things often run in inverse proportions."

"Well, that explains a few things about Cardassians, then," she said gently.

"I believe Cardassians have achieved a fair balance between the two," he said in a lecturing tone.

"Of course, you would. You're Cardassian."

"Oh, and you wouldn't argue that Bajorans are in some way superior to Cardassians?"

"Well, you put a Cardassian and a Bajoran in cold weather conditions, and see who the fragile one is. Your people didn't do too well during the Long Winter." She was rather enjoying this silly argument.

"Those were freak weather conditions," he said, anxious to get on with the anecdote that brought to mind. "Do you know I spent half that winter arguing with Naprem's sister-in-law that it had nothing to do with Prophet intervention, and the other half fighting off Naprem who wanted me to wear these ridiculous warm vests all the time," he told her, waving his finger at her as if to get her attention. "I told her I could handle a little cold. So my feet turned white, well, that's what regenerators are for."

She remembered that winter and the white frostbite on the soldier's fingers as his blood left the surface of his body to try and warm his vital organs. Her own hand was blue, but her blood was warm enough for her body to be kept at a comfortable temperature by the thick clothing she wore. His blood didn't have enough warmth of its own to keep his body temperature up, any exposure to such cold could be fatal. Dukat was already with Naprem in that winter, when she was so young her own hand trembled as she held the disrupter. She had killed people before, but this soldier had made a feeble attempt at chatting her up, and had shown her holograms of his mother and his brothers and sisters, and when she asked, he told her where the arms depot was, all he wanted was for her to warm his hands with hers. But you can't leave witnesses when you're at war.

"That was a long time ago," she said, still lost in the memory. "Just before you became the commander of the Dakhur province."

"Yes, that was the year I was promoted, before Naprem learned to keep her... her... whatever the adjective for clothes is --"

"Sartorial?" she offered.

"Right. Before she learned to keep her sartorial requirements to herself. You're right, that was a long time ago. Even Meridna was only eight!" He shook his head in amazement. "The idea of her ever having been a child... You should see her now – she's the image of *her* mother, too."

She presumed that was one of his daughters. It reminded her of his seven other children, the ones she had never met.

"What do your children make of all this? I mean, your other children."

He nodded to indicate he knew who she meant anyway. He shrugged his shoulders. "My daughters think what my wife and mother think -- they're all righteous outrage and hurt pride about Ziyal. My sons aren't so interested in the moral aspect of it all, but the disgrace will hamper their careers." He ran his hand through his hair and swore rather viciously under his breath. "I can't believe I could have been so stupid... I have spent my life trying to build a future for them. But my mother was right, I turned out just like my father, bringing them nothing but dishonour. The only difference is that I have no intention of giving in like he did. My time will come again, and believe me, no matter what the cost, I will make sure my children can hold their heads up high once more."

She was a little worried by his current train of thought.

"You care a lot about them," she said, more to prompt him to return to the subject of his children than to say anything important.

"You have never borne a child, have you, Major?" he asked, before rolling his eyes. "Neither have I, obviously... sorry, that was the wrong verb," he said, rubbing his forehead ridge. "Anyway, yes, I do care. My children are very precious to me... all of them. When I am dead, they will be my most important contribution to my species. With Ziyal as a little extra, a contribution to scientific curiosity or something... Families are essential because they mean the continuation of the Cardassian people. For generations, the next generation was all my people had to fight for... in fact, my people did a bit more fighting than the others, because they were a minority... but that's a long story. We're all equal Cardassians nowadays, and what matters is the continuation of the State." He finished his wine, and sighed. "I have made a fine mess of things after all. There was a time, when I was the governor of the Dakhur-Recantha region, when everything in my life seemed to be coming into focus. I had Naprem and a comfortable life on Bajor, my career was going well and it seemed I had a promising future. Then everything seemed to break down. I was assigned to Terok Nor, and though that was a promotion, it was not a pleasant one. Who would want to live on a horrible mining station when you could be living on Bajor? And then, of course, they made me Prefect, so that I would have the happy task of overseeing the evacuation." He looked over at her. "Well, you didn't think much of me before... You must downright despise me now. I'm not even the successful war criminal I'm cracked up to be."

She could have said something kind to him, to respond to the genuine distress in his eyes, but she found she could think of nothing to say.

He looked at the empty goblet in his hand. "And you're right," he added, "I am getting a little drunk."

He got up to walk to the replicator but somehow managed, in his inebriated state, to trip on the foot of the sofa. He cursed nicely in Kardasi, and sat on the arm of the sofa to lean down and rub his foot rather inefficiently through his boot.

"Are you all right?" she asked, a little concerned.

"Yes, fine. Just a little drunker than I like to be. I think I'll pass out in a moment," he said in a matter of fact voice which belied his wince.

"Where's that regenerator?" she asked.

"I don't know, I probably left it in the bedroom."

She hesitated and then got up, making for the adjoining room.

"Major," he said before she reached the door. "I can get the regenerator. You can get me a raktajino to sober me up."

He stood up and limped over to her. "Now, what were the chances of that happening?" he whined. "So much for my efforts to impress you, Major."

She laughed gently. "I told you you couldn't impress me."

He smiled at her as he looked into her upturned face. He dared to raise his hand to stroke her cheek; she had allowed it before, maybe she would allow it again. She was surprised by his gesture, and incomprehension furrowed her brow.

"I'll be right back," he said, hobbling in to regenerate his stubbed toe. He chose to perform the process in the bedroom, as he was sure he didn't want to show her his feet. She had seen quite enough of his body for one night -- that is, if she wasn't actually planning to show him hers. He smiled at the idea and wondered if she would really wait for him.

When he came out, he found she was standing by the replicator getting a raktajino as promised.

"I seem to have finally got it sorted out," she said. "Here's your raktajino."

He came over to get it from her and they smiled at each other almost amicably.

"Thank you, Major." He tried to get his mind to clear, and said, "I don't suppose I could call you something else?"

"What do you have in mind?" she asked a little teasingly.

"Nerys?"

She shook her head. "I see. You call me Nerys and I get to call you Dukat?"

"Well, maybe you could call me by my first name."

"I don't even know your first name."

He grinned and went back to his sofa. "All right, how about calling me šeršjin?"

He patted the sofa beside him invitingly as she came towards him, but she declined his invitation, choosing to sit on the couch opposite instead.

"That is one thing I will never call you," she promised. It would be a cold day on Cardassia before she was using any terms of endearment for him. "What is your first name, anyway?"

"Something rude in Bajoran," he said, as he wondered why she had ordered the raktajino so hot.

"Like what? Elme, maratz, kesharel, kantau?" She had to admit the idea of his bearing any of those names was pretty amusing.

"Yes, well, something like that," he said, realising by her expression that he was better off not telling her. "We Cardassians don't go in for publicising our given names."

"Right, so that's 'Major' to you, Dukat."

He nodded. "So much for that bright idea... I must say, I'm surprised you know so little about me, Major. I would have imagined that the Resistance would be better informed about my private life. But you didn't have any idea about Naprem, did you?"

"I didn't," she admitted. "Shakaar said he had heard rumours about a woman from the Southern Islands, though he was as surprised as I was when I told him about Ziyal."

"You mean Shakaar knew something about me that gave him a quick and efficient way of getting at me, and he didn't try to learn more?"

"The rumour wasn't all that near the mark. The Southern Islands aren't exactly Netapka."

He smiled as he remembered who the girl from the Southern Islands probably was.

"Yes, and Perdra wasn't exactly Naprem... she was her sister-in-law, the one who kept teasing me about the Prophets," he explained hastily, before she had time to get the wrong idea. "Still, I'm glad to know the First Minister takes as personal an interest in my private life as I do in his. Could this be something to do with you?"

She smiled mildly, but obviously couldn't think what to say.

"I'm very flattered a woman such as yourself takes such an interest in me," he said, smiling at the thought. She wanted him, she was interested in him, she talked about him with her lover, what more would he want from life? Well, perhaps a chance to get her to act on those emotions. The raktajino was clearing his mind wonderfully, and he was in the mood for some more bantering.

"I told you I'm not interested in you," she said.

"You also told me you didn't want me. I'm beginning to believe you're quite a good liar, Major."

She caught his eye and lowered her gaze, annoyed that she didn't have anything clever to say to that. If he really used conversation to gauge a person's education and intelligence, he must be getting a pretty picture of her erudition. The right picture, of course, as her years of formal education were long forgotten.

"I think I should be going," was the best thing she could think to say, and she made as if to rise.

With unusual alacrity, he sprang out of his seat and over to hers. She was so surprised she sat back on her couch immediately with him beside her. He stayed beside her, staring intently at her, until she wondered if there was some truth in the superstition that Cardassians had a natural talent for hypnotism. But she wasn't actually hypnotised -- just mesmerised, captivated, fascinated... well maybe just a little hypnotised.

"Don't go," he murmured after a while, running his hand gently through her hair.

"I told you I can't do this," she pleaded, though the sensation of him ruffling her hair seemed to be impairing her judgement. So much so, she quite forgot she had it in her power to make him stop.

"Forget Shakaar, Bajor and Deep Space Nine for now, Major. Just concentrate on what you want. I think we both know what that is right now," he said, his hand straying down her neck. She flinched at the touch, turning away from him as he continued, his husky, rumbling voice penetrating her mind even as it tried to shut him out and ignore his suggestion. "I am a good lover... at least I used to be back in the Hebitian period sometime," he added with a little wry smile. "It's been a while... but I know what caresses would please you, what kisses and touches you would like, how to relieve that desire you feel. I know --"

"Cut the speech, Dukat," she snapped, though her voice was barely above a whisper.

For once in his life, he actually did what she asked him to do. He remained quite silent as his hands stroked the back of her neck and then gently massaged her shoulders. Her breath quickened as she felt the tip of his nose tickle the nape of her neck and his hands went further down to caress her arms. His mouth moved around to where her jugular drew an irregular line under her otherwise smooth skin. She saw his grey face come into view in the corner of her eye and tilted her head slightly to see more of him. She shifted her body towards his and moved her arm to put it around his neck. He slipped his arms around her and placed a kiss on the lattice cutaway across the front of her shirt.

She let her lips brush his dark hair as she held him against her breast. His arms tightened around her frame, and she could feel his warm humid breath through the thin material of her shirt. Her chest heaved under his cheek and he lost himself in the moment, in the incredible radiating warmth of her Bajoran body. This was luck beyond anything he had expected from Major Kira.

He felt his body slipping on the smooth leather of the couch and moved to readjust his position. He leant against the back of the seat, pulling her so that she was leaning in the crook of his arm. She looked at him through half-closed eyes, part of her still puzzled by what she was doing there, while the rest just wanted more. She drew her face closer to his and smiled when his free hand traced the contour of her face. He was delighted at the look in her eyes. She was so relaxed just then, as if a heavy burden had been lifted from her.

He pulled her even closer and she wrapped both arms around his neck. She hesitantly ran her hand along the ridge on his neck and he gasped. She was surprised, and he placed his fingers on her temple, brushing her skin lightly until her dark eyes were screwed up in delight. He let the hand on her shoulder slide up until he could kneed the sensitive nape of her neck. She sighed and then, as if she suddenly remembered what she had started doing earlier, her hand grasped his neck ridge again. He leant forward until he could breathe on her neck. She seemed enthusiastic enough about that, so he moved his hand from her face to her body, placing it gently on her breast.

Her hand left his neck and she removed his hand from her bosom. She looked down at her pink fingers intertwined with his grey ones, surprised that she could be feeling so turned on by a creature whose very skin was so different from hers. His face was still close to hers and he nuzzled her cheek. She closed her eyes, wondering what to do next. It wasn't just a question of pheromones, she really wanted him. But tomorrow, she had to go back to Deep Space Nine, and she would have to face Odo, and Dax, and Shakaar, and not tell them anything about this. But that was tomorrow. In the meantime, she let go of his hand and it returned to her breast.

The sound of the main door opening behind them interrupted her thoughts, but by the time she had looked around, the door was closing again.

"What was that?" he murmured.

"The door," was all she could think to say.

She felt his nose tickle her ear. His hand was still caressing her and she leant against him and breathed in sensually as the tips of his fingers ran back up her throat. But then the touch stopped and he pulled his head off her shoulder.

"I... It might be Ziyal," he said hesitantly, his voice still husky, but his eyes on the closed door. He drew away from her and pulled his arm out from behind her back to run his fingers lightly through her tousled hair. She turned to look at him and smiled. He looked very, very pleased. But he was obviously thinking about his daughter. "I should go and see," he said, dragging himself away from her.

She let him go, surprised at the regret she felt, but somewhat grateful that the moment was broken. It was Shakaar she was in love with, she shouldn't even be contemplating sleeping with Dukat. Oh, Sweet Prophets, not to sleep with him, just have his grey hands run over her body, to feel that slim frame under her, to see those impertinent eyes closed with pleasure.

He had gone out into the corridor, and she stood up to regain her composure, stretching and pacing to relieve the tension still in her body. Driven by curiosity, she stepped towards the door and let it open for her. She didn't step out, but she could hear the voices further down the corridor, probably near Ziyal's quarters, just beyond Damar's.

They were speaking Kardasi, and she was vaguely surprised. For some reason, she had got used to hearing his voice in Bajoran tonight, and he sounded so different now. His voice had the same velvety tones, but the sound of his native language brought back such painful memories. She couldn't make out everything they were saying, but Ziyal's husky voice occasionally interrupted his and she heard her own name pronounced.

"[It's all right,]" she heard him say. "[We're just talking.]"

Ziyal's soft voice said something, and he responded, "[No, you can come, of course you can come, my jewel... She won't mind.]"

Her throat tightened as she realised Ziyal must have seen them. This was just not turning out to be her night. Now there were three witness to her weakness -- not only that, but she was bringing Ziyal back to the station with her. She hoped she could convince the girl that nothing had happened between her father and her. Which was true enough, if one adhered to a strict interpretation of "nothing".

"[No, she doesn't like me that much... I know, I know,]" continued his voice from the end of the corridor. "[But you'll like it there, and she'll take good care of you... Well, I know that, but you're still *my* little girl...]"

Kira smiled and went back into his quarters. She looked around and hesitated, before deciding there was no point staying there. She would be better off going to her quarters before she let herself in for any more stupid things with Dukat. She wondered how she would ever face Shakaar after this.

She took a deep breath and turned towards the door. As if on cue, it opened and she found herself nose to nose with the source of her problem.

"She's had another nightmare," he explained as he came in, "I usually let her sleep with me when that happens but she..." He stopped as he noticed where she was standing. His disappointment was so obvious, she nearly felt sorry for him. In fact, she did feel sorry for him. She felt pretty sorry for herself, too, because in that moment, she was feeling quite fond of him. Once she was back on Deep Space Nine, she would be able to forget about all this. The Cardassian architecture, the disaffected mining chutes, the presence of so many Bajorans on the station would remind her exactly who he was and what he had represented, and give her ample reason not to regret refusing him now.

"Well, I'm leaving anyway," she said.

He shook his head. "Actually, she's gone back to bed... She didn't want to disturb us," he explained with a wry smile.

She smiled too, and then her eyes caught his movement and she tensed up. If she let him touch her, she was not sure she would be able to make him stop. But his hands were resting on the bare skin of her upper arms. They moved up onto her shoulders and then to her throat, until they held her face in a slightly uplifted position. His thin lips touched hers and she was as surprised by their softness as she was by his gesture. Cardassians didn't do this. But he did, and she felt herself relax as his hands no longer supported her head, but ran down her neck and her back, pulling her body against his.

His mouth tasted of raktajino as she became bold enough to explore it. The gestures were familiar, just the same as she had learnt from her Bajoran lovers. Far too few lovers for a woman as sensual as she was, who so enjoyed the feeling of skin against hers, the warm touch of another person fulfilling her need for physical contact. But this man whose embrace she was accepting was an alien, a Cardassian, the member of a species so unlike hers, and yet sufficiently similar to make her body respond to his. His chest ridges were pressed against her breasts as his kiss continued, relentlessly seeming to rob her of her reason and her balance. She put her arms around his wide neck, only vaguely conscious of how strong her scent must be now that she was fully aroused again. How could she let Gul Dukat get her into such a state?

His head was spinning with the scent of her desire. The kiss in itself was as pleasant as he had ever dreamed, and he could hardly believe this was really her he was holding in his arms. He wondered if she would let him continue. That she should have reservations was logical; as far as she and her colleagues on DS9 were concerned, he was still the enemy. But he had no such qualms, of course. Damar and the rest of his crew were hardly going to pass judgement on his private life, and he wouldn't have to worry about any consequences. He tentatively fumbled with the buttons at the back of her top, gradually baring her smooth skin as the small disks slipped out of their holes. He had always hated buttons; he was sure the Bajorans had invented them purely to annoy him.

He had to let go of her to concentrate on what he was doing. He was strongly tempted to say something amusing to fill in the moment, but then decided it might bring her back to her senses, and that was the last thing he wanted right then. She leant against him as he reached around her, her hands still around his neck as she placed a kiss on the drop shaped ridge below his throat. He shuddered at the touch; he was really looking forward to getting some more of that. Shaken from her unusual passivity by his incapacity to get the buttons undone, she pulled away from his embrace and turned around.

"It will be easier like this," she murmured.

It certainly was. He was grateful she had thought of that, as a soft sweep of his hands across her back pushed the garment down over her arms. She pulled it off and sighed as she felt his slightly humid hands run along the sensitive skin of her waist. They slid onto her belly, slipping inquisitive fingers under the top of her trousers, and then up to caress her bared breasts. She enjoyed the sensation for a moment, leaning back against him, breathing in his smell and listening to his uneven breath as she voluntarily emptied her mind of all its worries.

He pulled her around gently so that he could see her face and really believe that it was her. He cast an appreciative look over her naked front and smiled at the expression on her familiar face.

"I must be dreaming," he murmured softly.

She lowered her eyes and pensively ran her fingers along the opening of his shirt.

"Yeah," was all she could say.

He unfastened the shirt rapidly -- it seemed to have a propensity for slipping off anyway -- and let it fall to the floor. A hesitant finger traced the contours of his patterned skin, followed by her soft lips. He hissed with pleasure and had to take a deep breath to recover some of his composure. The thought that this was actually Major Kira Nerys kissing him was amazing. He just hoped he would be able to rise to the occasion despite the mixture of blood wine and raktajino coursing through his veins. So far, so good.

She seemed reluctant to look him in the eye, but he didn't let that bother him to much. It did occur to him briefly that she was going to have a hard time going back to the station and facing all her friends and colleagues, knowing that she had slept with him of all people. He did at present harbour some tenderness for her, but it nonetheless gave him some satisfaction to imagine that in a few hours, she would be forced to lie to Shakaar. In the meantime, though, he had much more pressing matters on his mind.

She lay back as they sank down, the carpeted surface of the Klingon floor pressing against her naked skin. She let her eyes drift up to his grey face, expecting to see victory in his eyes, and steeling herself for his arrogant pleasure at her defeat. But all she saw there was an unaccustomed tenderness, the reflection of his momentary gratefulness at her surrender. Her relief was such that, when he smiled at her, she reached up to pull his smile onto her lips and his body close to hers.

  


She opened her eyes and sighed, running her fingers through the curly fuzz on her lover's chest. He was snoring just slightly, as he often did when he was lying on his back. She cast a tender look on his large body, so pink and smooth in the soft morning light of Bajor. How long had she loved him? Oh, for years when she was a young girl. She had forgotten him, and then remembered him again, and now she loved him almost as much as she had loved any man in her life. But as she looked at him, her mind reluctantly pulled her back a few hours, to the orange light of the captured Klingon ship, and the grey face she had caressed then.

She could still remember her own moans as she made love to him. Sweet Prophets, as she made love to Gul Dukat! How could she have done such a thing, she wondered now. But she knew how, and in that moment, she had had no regrets. She had wanted him and had enjoyed every single moment of the experience. Now she knew what it felt like to make love to a creature from another species, a creature she did not even like, that only had one thing in common with her -- passion.

They had rested against each other, lying on the floor, spent and, for a moment, even happy. He had stroked her cheek tenderly and whispered some endearments in Kardasi, something about her skin being beautiful. She had just smiled at him for want of something to say. After a moment, she had got up and put her uniform back on. He asked her to stay the night, mentioning that his bed was a little more comfortable than the floor, though on a Klingon ship, she knew that probably wasn't true. He had reluctantly let her go back to her room, and she had stayed there until the bird of prey reached Deep Space Nine.

She had taken leave of him in the presence of Ziyal. He was looking very pleased with himself, of course. In fact, he was positively beaming with joy. Considering what Damar and Ziyal knew, she had to be careful not to display any unusual behaviour. So she had said goodbye to him rapidly, though she could not resist the temptation to draw attention to his obvious satisfaction at her taking in Ziyal.

"This really pleases you, doesn't it?" she challenged, conscious of Ziyal's eyes on them both.

"Major, it gives me reason to live," he exclaimed, leaning towards her.

She feared for a moment he might kiss her.

He didn't. And much as it shamed her when she thought about it later, she had almost wished he had.  
 


End file.
